
l^fW^IV^ 



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V 



AMUSEMENTS 



LIGHT OF REASON. HISTORY. AND 
REVELATION. 



By rev. S. M. VERNON, D. D. 



<^>--'"'coPVRit.Hr. ■ o;;"- 



sf OCT 3^1882 / 



CINCINNATI : 

WALDEN AND STOWE. 

NEW YORK: 

PHILLIPS AND HUNT. 

1882. 



Copyright by 

WALDEN AND STOWE, 

1882. 



PREFACE 



THE substance of the following pages was 
first delivered in the form of Sermons in 
Roberts Park Church, Indianapohs, at a time 
when the amusements, here condemned, were 
seriously threatening the life of the Churches. 
It soon appeared that the divine blessing at- 
tended the Word in arresting many who were 
already in the way of folly, and in arousing 
the consciences of Christians on the subject. 
Ministers and members of different denomina- 
tions expressed their appreciation of the serv- 
ice done the cause of Christ, and requested 
that a more permanent form be given to the 
spoken word. 

In complying with this request, I have not 
materially altered the form of the discussion, 
except in breaking it up into chapters, in add- 
ing a few passages not proper for a public 



2 PREFACE. 

address before a promiscuous audience, and 
in omitting a few not necessary to the argu- 
ment. 

The careful reader will detect both the ex- 
cellencies and the defects of my work, and 
I need not therefore offer any explanation as 
apology for them. I have brought to it the 
fruits of careful thought, wide observation, 
and diligent reading, and I now send it forth 
as a warning voice beyond the walls within 
which I am accustomed to speak, in the ear- 
nest hope that God may make it a blessing in 
saving some souls from the pleasing devices 

of the great destroyer. 

S. M. VERNON. 

Indianapolis, Ind.y 

Au^. 7, 1882, 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. ^ PAGE. 
Amusements Designed of God, 7 

CHAPTER H. 
Amusements Necessary, 12 

CHAPTER HI. 
Proper and Improper Amusements, 17 

CHAPTER IV. 
The History of the Theater, 36 

CHAPTER V. 
Testimony Concerning the Character of the 

Theater, 40 

CHAPTER VI. 

The Testimony of the Church Concerning the 

Theater, 48 

CHAPTER VH. 
The Well-known Character of Actors and Act- 
resses an Objection to the Theater, ... 54 



4 CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER VIII. PAGE. 
The Character of the Plays in Use, 62 

CHAPTER IX. 
The Theater's Defense, 68 

CHAPTER X. 
The Moral Influence of the Theater, 73 

CHAPTER XI. 
The Theater and Christian Life, 80 

CHAPTER XII. 
Can the Theater be Reformed ? 87 

CHAPTER XIII. 
The Dance in History, 95 

CHAPTER XIV. 
The Testimony of the Church Against the Dance, 99 

CHAPTER XV. 
The Dance Unfavorable to Health, 103 

CHAPTER XVI. 
The Dance Unfavorable to Intellectual and 

Social Development, 106 

CHAPTER XVII. 
The Dance Requires a Wasteful Expenditure of 

Money 109 



CONTENTS. 5 

CHAPTER XVIIL page. 

The Dance Condemned for its Evil Associations, i 13 

CHAPTER XIX. 
The Dance Unfavorable to the Right Relation 

of the Sexes, 115 

CHAPTER XX. 
The Dance Destructive of Christian Life, . . .122 

CHAPTER XXI. 
CardSj Billiards, and Games, 131 

CHAPTER XXII. 
A Closing Word with Professing Christians, . . 144 



AMUSEMENTS. 



Chapter I. 

AMUSEMENTS DESIGNED OP GOD. 

MAN has been called "the laughing ani- 
mal." This definition, if not exhaustive, 
is at least philosophical and suggestive. In 
the crown of superior faculties with which the 
Creator was pleased to endow man, he placed 
this sparkling gem as a peculiar divine gift. 
Laughter is the efflorescence or sportive ac- 
tion of the nobler powers — reason, judgment, 
fancy, taste, and even of conscience itself. The 
sense of humor is a strong element in human 
nature, appearing in all grades of society, 
growing with advancing civilization and cul- 
ture, adapting itself to all religions and philos- 
ophies, and running through all the experi- 
ences of life, like a golden thread, essential to 
the integrity of the fabric. If God included 
the faculties for amusement in the outfit with 
which he launched man upon the sea of time, 



8 AMUSEMENTS. 

it is clear that he intended him to use them, in 
keeping upon a safe course, in preserving him 
from despondency when the way seemed dan- 
gerous, or in reinvigorating and fertiUzing his 
nobler powers for renewed effort. The Cre- 
ator gave man an eye that he might see, an 
ear that he might hear, and faculties for 
amusement that they might be used. The 
faculty proves the intention of the Creator. 
If God made man with a propensity to laugh 
it Is clear that he intended him to laugh, that 
in itself It Is right, and that it ministers to the 
highest good. 

This propensity, like all others, must, of 
course, be subject to law, or what was de- 
signed for a blessing may become a curse. 
The purest and most useful of all our faculties 
may be so used as to destroy themselves and 
corrupt the character, but the fact that they 
may be, and often are so used. Is no argu- 
ment against their proper and lawful use. 
The abuse of a good thing is an argument for 
Its disuse only to superficial thinkers and un- 
reasoning fanatics. The fact that the fire in 
our dweUings sometimes consumes instead of 
warming them ; that trains sometimes dash off 



DESIGNED OF GOD. 9 

instead of gliding along the tracks, does not 
lead us to abolish them, but rather to study 
the best methods of security against such 
accidents. Every good involves a possible 
evil, and the problem of life is how to secure 
the good and avoid the evil. If you have an 
Eden, be sure there lurks somewhere amid its 
bowers a serpent. A war against the good, 
because possible evil is associated with it, is a 
war against human nature itself, and against 
the established order of divine Providence. . 
The reaction against licentiousness, avarice, 
ambition, and worldliness to the other extreme 
of forbidding all amusements, beginning in 
the first centuries of the Christian Church and 
still continuing in some of its branches, known 
in history under the name of ' ' asceticism, " was 
one of the greatest blunders the human mind 
ever made in its search for truth. It was 
possible only in a state of partial illumination, 
when the eyes, not fully opened, *'saw men 
as trees walking," and were unable to distin- 
guish between the shadow and the substance. 
A pall of darkness was thrown over the day 
God had made; the joys he had instituted 
and sanctified were excommunicated and out- 



lo AMUSEMENTS. 

lawed; the natural propensities ordained for 
man's good were cursed and forbidden ; the 
sweet relations and companionships of life 
were abandoned for solitude in' caves and 
mountains; pleasure was a sin, penance a 
duty, suffering a virtue, and man was made fit 
for heaven by making himself unfit for earth ; 
while all the music, sweetness, beauty, and 
joy of the world were attributed to the Devil 
and were remanded to him. It is not strange 
that a religion so at war with the divine will, 
as recorded in human nature and the consti- 
tution of things, should have failed to win the 
hearts of men, causing a reaction that carried 
vast numbers into infidelity. When the Lord's 
goods are thus deliberately turned over and 
accredited to the Devil by those who ought to 
understand and defend their just title, it is not 
strange if many choose the arch traitor instead 
of the righteous Sovereign. 

God is the author of the body as well as 
of the soul, of the social instincts as well as 
of conscience, of the sense of beauty and 
humor as well as of the moral affections, and 
he intends all the powers of the one to be 
used and governed according to his law as 



DESIGNED OF GOD. ii 

fully as the other. We dismember "the body 
of Christ," *'put asunder what God has joined 
together," and introduce disorder and confu- 
sion when we forbid what God has allowed. 
To forbid amusements is to charge God with 
folly in giving us faculties for them, and so to 
mar and disorder his work in nature as to 
pervert or render difficult his work of grace. 



12 AMUSEMENTS. 



Chapter II. 

AMUSEMENTS NECESSARY. 

IF we look thoughtfully at the practical ben^ 
efit of amusements, we shall find the law of 
the ''highest good "justifying and demanding 
them. It is a law of our natures we dare not 
ignore, that hard toil must be followed by rest 
and recreation. The jaded faculties must have 
time and conditions favorable for regaining 
wasted energies. Our fast and feverish Amer- 
ican living furnishes us examples enough of 
worn-out nerves and exhausted brains in men 
at middle life to assure us that God never 
fails to find an officer strong enough to enforce 
the penalty of his law, and that the profit of 
disobedience is poor compensation for the pen- 
alty sure to follow. 

Rest is not found, however, in inaction, so 
much as in a change of activities from the 
laborious to the agreeable, exhilarating, and 
joyous. A good evening laugh is one of 
nature's best antidotes for the weariness of a 



NECESSARY. 13 

hard day's toil. Music sets the nerves ting- 
h'ng, and carries rest to the tired brain and 
muscle. To lie down, like the tired ox as soon 
as the j^oke is removed, is to carry the weari- 
ness of the day into the night, and to rise in 
the morning as a drudge, and go jaded to a 
task in which we should be fresh, buoyant, 
and vigorous. The weary mind should drop 
its work when the day is done, and for a time 
wander amid scenes of beauty and delight, 
drink in the harmonies of music, join in the 
prattle and laughter of children and friends, 
taste the sweets of literature, wander on the 
swift wings of thought over the vast and vari- 
egated fields of knowledge, or seek amid the 
charms of pure social intercourse to drown the 
memory of toil and care; then will sleep be 
sweet and the return of toil welcome. 

Amusements are a preventive also of monot- 
ony in life, one of the greatest impediments 
to happiness and usefulness. To bow the head 
and bend the frame to an unchanging round 
of exacting daily toil ; to shut out the sunlight, 
the songs of birds, the beauty and fragrance 
of flowers, and compel the soul to sit with 
folded wings within some dismal work-house, 



14 AMUSEMENTS. 

calculating cost and profit, is the worst and 
most destructive torm of servitude. The most 
solemn and important occupations lose their 
interest and profit and become dull, spiritless, 
and perfunctory, if the mind has not occasional 
release to wander amid other and very differ- 
ent scenes, from which it comes back with 
new zest and spirit to its more important tasks. 
Satiety begets loathing, and when the mind 
has feasted to the full at any table, it must be 
allowed to go abroad upon such rambles as 
are open to it, that it may come back with 
renewed appetite. This law holds even in de- 
votion. The mumbling priest, who is always 
engaged in some religious ceremony ; the long, 
solemn face, rarely visited by the sunlight of 
a smile or a hearty laugh ; the demure, sanc- 
timonious disciple who denies God's beauty a 
place in his life ; and the man who is always 
thinking of eternity, death, and the judgment 
in a gloomy, somber way, are not those who 
best please the Master and win most souls to 
him. Man is a wondrously constructed instru- 
ment, with many keys, capable of producing 
the sweetest and sublimest melodies to the 
praise of God, when swept by a master hand. 



NECESSARY. 15 

If the maker of the instrument and the op- 
erator are to receive the highest glory, it must 
be by the use of every key and capacity of 
the instrument, bringing out the greatest pos- 
sible variations and the highest and tenderest 
bursts of melody, so as neither to mar the in- 
strument nor to produce discord or monotony 
to the listener. A continual drumming upon 
one or two keys, even upon the key of relig- 
ion itself, sublime and soul-stirring as it is, 
will become monotonous and disgusting; but 
if the fingers occasionally wander away to the 
lighter strains of fancy, when they drop back 
again to this, its awful thunder will be as the 
voice of God to the soul. Monotony kills its 
thousands, and disables for useful or happy 
living many more than it kills. The sad, spir- 
itless, unattractive lives, which many lead, 
might be transformed into gardens of beauty 
for themselves, with fountains of blessing for 
others, if enough of God's sunlight and spark- 
ling dews could be distilled into them to break 
up the monotony which has fallen upon them 
like the blight of death. 

Amusements minister also to the health of 
mind and body. Physicians know the influ- 



1 6 AMUSEMENTS. 

ence of a cheerful spirit, of laughter, and of 
a wise use of amusements upon the bodily 
health. They are often better, and are cer- 
tainly cheaper, than medicine. The intellect 
needs air, sunshine, and variety on the play- 
ground, in the fields, or in society for its 
proper health. Mental disease, and insanity 
itself, is often the effect of long continued 
thought upon one subject, without the relax- 
ation and recreation by amusements or other- 
wise ordained by a wise Providence for our 
health. As the birds rest and plume them- 
selves for flight, so must the intellectual 
toiler, if, like the eagle, he is to soar above 
the clouds, and, like the lark, to sing while 
he soars. Life would be longer, work easier, 
the soul sweeter and happier, and our moral 
power greater, if, when jaded and worn, we 
would turn to the pleasant recreations within 
the reach of all. 



TROPER AND IMPROPER. 1 7 



Chapter III. 

PROPER AND IMPROPER AMUSEMENTS. 

THAT God intended man for joy and glad- 
ness is as evident as that he intended the 
sun to shine and the birds to sing. How is 
this design to be reaHzed? Did God make 
man for rehgious joys only? To what extent 
may we seek joy and pleasure in the world ? 
It may be admissible in a high state of 
religious fervor as a kind of exaggerated sen- 
timentalism to sing: 

*' Other knowledge I disdain; 
'T is all but vanity : 
Only Jesus will I know, 
And Jesus crucified." 

He who literally knows and loves ''only 
Jesus " is a monster unfit for this world as for 
that which is to come. The world is full of 
things which it is our duty to know, love, and 
enjoy. If we love Christ truly we must love 
whatever he has made; and what we love, 
we enjoy, and naturally wish to know and 



1 8 AMUSEMENTS. 

understand. We dishonor God when we neg- 
lect or refuse to use the powers he has given 
us. or the provisions he has made for our 
happiness and well-being. While in the world 
and in the body we owe them a proper recog- 
nition, the neglect of which is nothing less 
than rebellion against the divine order. 

Are these joys to be such as are derived 
from manly effort and honorable success in 
our chosen occupation ? The joys of success 
in an honorable business life are sweet, far- 
reaching in their influence, and permanent in 
their character, but the tired nerves and the 
careworn brain insist upon the occasional play- 
day for which God has made in nature such 
abundant provisions. The old adage, "All 
work and no play makes Jack a dull boy," is 
true to nature and history, as it is also that 
all play and no work will make him a worth- 
less boy. 

The joys of solitude, of literature, of art, 
and of meditation are of great value in enrich- 
ing the Hfe, broadening and cultivating the 
intellect ; but man is by nature intensely social, 
and has powerful impulses to other and more 
social forms of amusement and diversion. 



PROPER AND IMPROPER. 19 

When a company of bright and happy chil- 
dren come together, how quickly and naturally 
they ask, ''What shall we play?" This ques- 
tion runs through all grades of society and 
through all history, and we come now to its 
consideration. 

There is, however, another question pre- 
paratory to this ; that is, * * Where shall we 
play? At home, or in the public hall? At 
the house of a friend, or with the public in 
the theater? In the fields, or in the street?" 
** Where" will help us to determine ''what," 
and is therefore first to be considered. 

The one fundamental institution which 
survives all revolutions ; dates from the earliest 
period and Is co-extensive with the race; com- 
prehends in itself the essentials for the per- 
petuity and welfare of man, the shelter of 
helpless childood and old age — the sanctuary, 
at the altar of which woman's beauty and man's 
strength find pure and happy union; the unit 
of civilization and the corner-stone of the 
state; the institution first in importance as it 
is first in the order of time, is the family. 
The home was designed by God to furnish 
most of these helps which are needed to cheer 



20 AMUSEMENTS. 

US in adversity, to comfort us in sorrow, and 
to rest and soothe us after toil. The purest, 
best, most helpful and joyous amusements are 
those where parents and children join after 
the tasks of the day are over in the sanctuary 
of the home. Can any better relief from care 
and weariness be found, or any surer means 
of keeping the heart young and fresh than 
this contact with childhood in the sports and 
amusements of the home? Shall the father 
come home at night jaded and worn, and sit 
down sullen and morose to brood over the 
day's mishaps, or seek unnatural society and 
amusements as an escape from care instead of 
finding in the love and cheerfulness of his 
wife, and in the buoyant, sparkling, happy 
little natures God has given him, the brightest 
and best retreat from toil and care this world 
affords? The great Dr. Lyman Beecher was 
accustomed, after his heaviest days of toil in 
preaching or speaking, to turn the home into 
a play-ground, himself the leader in all the 
fun and frolic. He used to say he never 
made such rapid progress in his work as Avhen 
down on all fours with the baby on his back, 
playing horse. With such a home Hfe as this 



PROPER AND IMPROPER. 21 

it IS not strange that he maintained such 
remarkable vigor, and that so many of his 
children have risen to eminence in carrying 
forward the same work that engaged his heart 
and brain. 

Life would be longer and happier, the in- 
fluence of parents over their children immeas- 
urably greater, and home the sweetest place 
on earth, if parents would thus keep them- 
selves in sympathy and contact with the 
child-life of the home. To laugh and play 
with a child that never knew a care and is free 
as a bird will shame a sordid, careworn soul 
into a better frame of feeling, and will mag- 
netize a sluggish, stupid mind into a sem- 
blance at least of life and freshness. Its 
influence upon childhood and youth can not 
be computed. It rarely occurs that the father 
who descends to the plane of his children in 
games, plays, and amusements fails in leading 
tliem to his in religious life and moral integ- 
rity. If the parent respects and enters into 
the child's life he will himself be a great 
gainer, and he will find the child generously 
responsive in respecting and entering his life 
in its highest and noblest forms. I therefore 



22 AMUSEMENTS. 

assume that the home, or a union of homes 
in the larger social circle, is to be the chief 
though not the only theater of those amuse- 
ments which Providence has designed for our 
welfare. There are games, plays, and amuse- 
ments of sufficient number and variety to suit 
every age, grade of intelligence, and circum- 
stance if only there is genius enough to use 
them. 

The history of public amusements, with 
paid performers, and prizes for contestants, with 
a manager back of the scenes inspired by love 
of money to make the strongest possible ap- 
peals to the taste of the multitude, as the 
means of increasing his gains, whether we 
consider it in Grecian, Roman, mediaeval, or 
modern times, is a history of demoralizing 
and corrupting influences. The principle in- 
volved in hiring another to amuse and enter- 
tain you is false and pernicious. You corrupt 
him by your money to become a clown or 
an actor, while you buy exemption for your- 
self from the obvious duty of actively engag- 
ing in such recreations and amusements as 
will answer the wants of your own nature and 
be helpful to others. The fields, forests, riv- 



PROPER AND IMPROPER. 23 

ers, lakes, and oceans are open to all and 
afford opportunity for a variety of innocent 
and healthful amusements; but, after all, the 
home will be found to furnish the best staple 
of daily recreations. 

■ The question as to Avhat these amusements 
may be seems very much like a request for 
rules by which to be happy, joyous, humor- 
ous, or witty. The spirit is always more than 
the form, must go before it, and Avill easily 
devise it if necessary. If one has the spirit 
of amusement he will not need much instruc- 
tion as to the form it shall take ; and if he has 
the form without the spirit, as in all such 
cases, it is but a sepulcher, he may whiten 
and garnish it as he will and call it a play- 
house, but it is still only a sepulcher. *^A 
merry heart is a perpetual feast," and the 
simplest trifles are wonderfully amusing and 
entertaining if a loving, humorous heart Is 
back of them. 

It is asked, however, *'Is it wise to intro- 
duce games into the home?" The love of 
games seems universal in the race, must have 
been implanted by God, and under proper 
control may be indulged with advantage. By 



24 AMUSEMENTS. 

introducing fictitious rivalries, contests, and 
ambitions they effectually call off the mind, 
for the time, from the real, thus affording 
relief from anxiety and care, while they exer- 
cise, gratify, and amuse a variety of faculties 
without necessarily corrupting or injuring any. 
The dangers to be carefully avoided are the 
waste of time, morbid excitement, and famil- 
iarity with, and fondness for, the methods of 
gamblers. You may choose to walk on the 
brow of a precipice to enjoy the view and the 
bracing air, but it is with the distinct knowl- 
edge that one step to the right or left may be 
destruction, and that safety depends upon 
your power of self-control. 

Many Christians feel that they may with 
safety employ billiards and other gambling 
games in their homes, but the peril involved 
here can justify the risk only under peculiar 
circumstances. A recent attempt was made 
in Princeton College, under the careful and 
able presidency of Dr. McCosh, to restrain 
the students from improper gaming and dissi- 
pation by supptying the college with billiard 
tables. After a few months' experience a com- 
mittee, including Dr. McCosh, was appointed 



TROPER AND IMPROPER? 25 

to examine the practical results. They found, 
to their amazement and sorrow, that it had 
greatly increased the evil they sought to cure, 
that many young men had been led by it into 
gambling and dissipation. They pronounced 
the experiment a disastrous failure, and it was 
at once abandoned. An Episcopal minister 
of New York City, believing that billiards in 
connection with a church might serve a good 
purpose in attracting and interesting young 
men, made the experiment under his own 
direction. He became very fond of playing 
himself, and was compelled at length to resign 
his Church because of the power the habit had 
acquired over him. He made yet another 
attempt of the same kind in a neighboring 
city, and became more deeply involved than 
before, contracted the habit of drinking, and 
died a drunkard. If we walk in the light of 
experience, which seems to be the only safe 
rule in such a case, we will be forced to the 
conclusion that games used for gambling can 
not be safely introduced into the home, the 
school, or the Church. The world is wide, 
and there are games and amusements without 
number free from these dangers, which leaves 



26 AMUSEMENTS. 

US without excuse for employing those that 
are even doubtful. 

It will be difficult for those accustomed to 
the excitements of the theater, the dance, and 
the billiard room to appreciate the pure and 
rational joys of legitimate and innocent amuse- 
ments, until their tastes are reformed by wise 
discipline, and the intoxication under which 
they are living has passed away. To such, 
home is a stupid place, books are dull, society 
is stiff and formal, music has nothing in it, 
innocent games are childish, concerts and 
lyceums are a bore, and nothing that does not 
intoxicate by its excitement is acceptable. 
Let me remind these persons, however, that 
the great mass of the human race has appre- 
ciated, and the wisest and best have greatly 
loved, these things, and it is no compliment to 
you that you esteem them so lightly. The 
world is full of beauty, loveliness, and joy; 
but your eyes are so blinded you do not see 
it, and you cry out as if about to be impov- 
erished forever when the Church raises its 
warning voice against the corrupt amusements 
of the time and say, " v/hat then shall we 
do?" It is the cry of the ignorant and de- 



PROPER AND IMPROPER. 27 

praved in every vile pursuit. The rumseller 
says, "Would you have me give up my busi- 
ness? I can't live without it. What, then, 
would you have me do?" The gambler says, 
"Give up my gambling? How can I Hve? 
What shall I do ? Life would be a blank to 
me." The licentious say, "Do you want me 
to give up all pleasure? Am I to have no 
amusement? Would you make life a pro- 
longed funeral?" The evil is in the existence 
and cultivation of a false taste and of corrupt 
passions. Correct the taste and purify the 
affections, and then you will find greater joy 
in things that are pure. 

One great error in treating this subject has 
been in condemning what is wrong without 
pointing out what is right. The law that deals 
only in "shall nots " will fail. The first and 
great commandment is, "thou shalt," and 
men must be governed by a law that directs 
and develops the forces that are within them. 
You might as well attempt to shut up the 
steam in the boiler with a glowing fire be- 
neath, as attempt to shut up the forces of a 
young life and deny it the development of its 
natural powers and impulses ; explosion and 



28 AMUSEMENTS. 

death is the result of such a course. Not re- 
pression, but education, is the law here as 
elsewhere. A young lady asked an aged 
minister, "What, then, shall I do for amuse- 
ment?" The answer was, "Walk out into 
the field, or lie down and sleep." A very 
sleepy answer, and a powerful, practical argu- 
ment to the young lady's mind in favor of the 
theater and the dance. Want of occupation is 
not amusement, nor is rest always to be found 
in doing nothing. It is our duty to study 
and understand the provisions God has made 
in nature and in the development of society 
for the amusement of the young and of all 
classes, and ignorance and indifference here 
are no less criminal than in other departments 
of divine truth. 

Society carries with it from generation to 
generation a great number of innocent games 
and amusements, needing no mention here, 
since they are well known to all. The mag- 
azines and papers of the land are full of sug- 
gestions to those who need them, and a sharp 
eye will soon detect enough to stock the home 
or community for any reasonable demand, 
There are also many books of games and 



PROPER AND IMPROPER. 29 

amusements to which one may resort when 
invention runs low.^ 

No enumeration of games and amusements, 
even if it were to descend to minute details, 
could satisfy the abnormal craving for new and 
exciting entertainments every-Avhere found 
among the patrons of the theater and the 
dance ; neither would it quench the insatiable 
thirst of those who have never by hard work 
earned the right to amusement, or created the 
need and healthy appetite for recreation. How 
such people are to be amused, I have no skill 
and Httle disposition to say; to them "one 
thing is needful," honest toil with hand or 
brain, all else will naturally follow. 

I must close this chapter with a few gen- 
eral remarks about the character of amuse- 
ments. 

I . They should not be expensive. 

Many people live in rented houses all their 

* The following books, though containing some things 
I can not approve, will be found full of suggestions that 
maybe turned to good account: "The American Home 
Book of Indoor Games, Amusements, and Occupations ;" 
"Evening Amusements;" "The Home Book of Pleasure 
and Instruction;" " Appleton's Home Amusements;** 
"The Play-ground and the Parlour." 



30 AMUSEMENTS. 

days, and yet patronize expensive theaters, 
operas, and parties ; they can not afford books 
or higher education for their children, but they 
have money for a low clown or actor, who will 
make them laugh, or play upon their passions. 
Many professing Christians worship in debt- 
burdened, struggling Churches, and yet give 
more every year to the support of the theater 
than to the cause of God. 

2. They should be used among adults only for 
rest and recreation after toil. The true object 
of life is realized only in some useful employ- 
ment, the pursuit of knowledge, works of 
charity, or the exercises of religion. When 
amusements usurp the place of these, or of 
any one of them, and become the chief object 
of life, the thing most eagerly sought, the di- 
vine purpose and plan for life is utterly frus- 
trated, God's whole law broken and trampled 
upon, and the life becomes a wretched failure. 
Amusements are designed to rest and refresh 
the weary powers after toil. Keep this de- 
sign in view, and there is not much danger 
of going astray. The idle, languid multitudes 
who clamor for amusements, who live for 
them, and find their only relief from ennui 



PROPER AND IMPROPER. 31 

and stagnation in the excitement they afford, 
of all other classes have least need of them. 
They are debauching their powers, defying 
the laws of God and of their own being, kill- 
ing time, wasting opportunities, and dwarfing 
intellect and heart. What they do need is 
solid work, hard study, earnest purposes, lofty 
aims, and sincere convictions. The frivolous, 
worthless multitudes, who clamor continually 
for some new excitement to relieve the terri- 
ble burden of an aimless being, who swarm 
about our large cities feeding the haunts of 
vice, poisoning the moral atmosphere, and 
threatening the very existence of society; 
who, knowing neither the exquisite pleasure 
of hard toil nor the sweetness of the rest that 
follows it, are driven to find a substitute for 
both in the intoxication of amusement and 
folly, need nothing so much as to have this 
abnormal appetite cured by the healthy disci- 
pline of hard work. 

3. They should be mnocent and pure. To 
work with saints through the day and play 
Avith sinners in the evening; to pray with 
God's people in the Church and to laugh with 
the children of Satan at impurity in the thea- 
3 



32 AMUSEMENTS. 

ter, is not in harmony with the teaching of 
the Word of God or of sound reason. To 
engage in such amusements as are furnished 
by performers of known corrupt character, or 
that attract to them most powerfully the vile 
classes, must of necessity be perilous to good 
character. No amusement ought to be touched 
in which there is a well understood drift or 
tendency toward evil ; in which there is any 
improper association of the sexes, exposures, 
or attitudes of the body ; or in which there is 
any suggestion or allusion to coarse or base 
passions, otherwise than in severe condemna- 
tion. To associate with vile persons, look 
upon impure scenes, or patronize corrupt in- 
stitutions, is the sure beginning of moral de- 
generacy. 

4. They should be such as not to detract 
from our Christian influence. 

The world laughs at theater-going and 
dancing Christians. Satan rejoices over them, 
and good men mourn for them. The Chris- 
tian's power for good, a power of more value 
than any other, is greatly injured, if not de- 
stroyed, the moment he is seen to engage in 
doubtful amusements. The consciences of un- 



PROPER AND IMPROPER. 33 

converted men are very tender upon this point, 
and whatever they allow themselves, they at 
least require that professing Christians shall 
make no compromises with the world and sin. 
Doubt and suspicion of the integrity of Chris- 
tian character, as well as of the truth of relig- 
ion, spread abroad hke a deadly blight in 
communities where Christians discredit their 
profession by these sinful amusements. 

Even the use of innocent and pure amuse- 
ments by Christians is not entirely free from 
danger. When a man who professes to be 
consecrated to the work of saving men, hun- 
dreds of whom surround him daily, as he 
professes to believe in the broad way to de- 
struction, gives up a whole day at a time, 
from sunrise to sunset, to some trivial game, 
proper enough for an hour's recreation, he 
lays himself liable to a suspicion of insincerity 
and a want of moral earnestness. The day 
laborer who gets his two dollars a day can 
not afford to spend his time thus; and if the 
Christian, who professes to be working for 
God and souls, can, it is construed as an indi- 
cation that he has not a very high opinion of 
the importance of the work or of the wages 



34 AMUSEMENTS. 

he Is to get. The wasting of time and oppor- 
tunities in innocent recreations may prove de- 
structive of Christian influence. 

"We scatter seeds with careless hand, 

And dream we ne'er shall see them more, 

But for a thousand years 

Their fruit appears 

In weeds that mar the land 
Or healthful store. 

The deeds we do, the words we say, 

Into still air they seem to fleet, 
We count them ever past; 
But they shall last. 
In the dread judgment they 

And we shall meet. 

I charge thee by the years gone by, 
For the love's sake of brethren dear, 

Keep thou the one true way 

In work and play, 

Lest in that world their cry 
Of woe thou hear." 

A very safe rule for the Christian is never 
to go anywhere or do any thing upon which 
he can not ask God's blessing. Another 
equally good was thus expressed by Dr. 
Charles Hall : * * I have a great desire to see a 
tragedy performed by a great actor, but I 
have made up my mind never to go to any 



PROrER AND IMPROPER. 35 

place where I would be unwilling to die. 
Now, I should be very sorry to die while see- 
ing a play in a theater." Hannah More 
gives the following safe counsel to Christians: 
"A Christian's amusements must be blameless 
as well as ingenuous, safe as well as rational, 
moral as well as intellectual. They must have 
nothing in them which may be likely to excite 
any of the tempers which it is his daily task 
to subdue, any of the passions which it is 
his constant business to keep in order. His 
chosen amusements must not deliberately add 
to the weight which he is commanded to 
lay aside; they should not imitate the beset- 
ting sin against which he is struggling; they 
should not obstruct that spiritual-mindedness 
which he is told is life and peace; they should 
not inflame that lust of the flesh, that lust of 
the eye, and that pride of life which he is 
forbidden to gratify." 



36 AMUSEMENTS. 



Chapter IV. 

THE HISTORY OF THE THEATER. 

THE theater is an institution of civilization, 
though germs of it may be found in semi- 
civilized tribes as early as a thousand years 
before Christ. Its universality proves that its 
existence depends upon no accident of time, 
place, or circumstance; that it is founded upon 
human nature, and gives expression to natural 
faculties, and satisfies tastes and aspirations 
common to all men. In spite of the severe 
and just criticisms to which it is everywhere 
subjected because of its immoral influences, it 
flourishes and holds a position of power in all 
civilized lands. 

The disposition to represent real or ficti- 
tious scenes from life in drama, has been uni- 
versal in the history of the race. Traces of 
it are found in the rude war dances of savages, 
in which the scenes of combat are dramatized, 
and it appears in all the comic and tragic per- 
formances of more cultivated nations. Dark 



THE THEATER. 37 

as the history of the theater has been, and 
futile as have been all attempts to reform it, 
I must suppose that God gave man this talent 
and love for dramatic representation that it 
might be developed and used for his good. 
The failure of all attempts in the past, points 
to the conclusion that the theater as an insti- 
tion for the amusement of the public can not 
be reformed, yet we may still hope that in 
other forms the exercise of dramatic talent 
may be made to serve the highest interests of 
society. 

Turning from all speculations, however, we 
find that as matter of fact, the good and the 
great of all times have pronounced the thea- 
ter ''infamous;'' that is the word chosen and 
consecrated by the use of the world's nobility. 
We can trace it to a definite beginning in the 
feasts of Bacchus, five hundred years before 
Christ; from which time, hand in hand with 
the wine-god, its first lover and life-long com- 
panion, it has journeyed through the world, 
spreading demoralization and desolation on 
every hand. It is quite remarkable that, like 
the destructive plague, intoxication, its bosom 
companion, it flourishes best in Christian 



38 - AMUSEMENTS. 

lands, being the devil's most successful scheme 
for ensnaring the intelligence and culture Avhich 
a vigorous Christianity always begets, even in 
tlie unchristian masses of the communities 
where it exists. The theater, the saloon, and 
the brothel are the three confederate tempting 
devils of civilization, seeking to despoil the 
flower of humanity, and to rob Christ of the 
honor achieved by the triumphs of his Gospel 
in the elevation of men. The theater insinu- 
ates lust, murder, theft, hypocrisy, and prof- 
ligacy upon overworked and sensitive minds 
under the name of amusement and recreation ; 
it inoculates our fairest sons and daughters 
with the most deadly poisons, corrupting 
personal purity, destroying domestic happi- 
ness, and dishonoring the sanctuary of home 
under the guise of music, oratory, and fine 
scenery; it has proven "a school of vice and 
the home of debauchery " under the name of 
the temple of art and good literature. It is 
black with the curses of the souls it has 
ruined, infamous for the social impurities it 
has nursed into life, and abhorred by every 
one who studies its work of degradation and 
death. Whether maintained by the classic 



THE THEATER. 39 

Greeks, or carefully guarded by the laws of 
ancient India and China from the vices allowed 
in connection with it in modern Christian 
nations ; whether called into being as a pagan 
religious ceremony, as among the Greeks and 
Indians, or drifting into the Christian Church, 
blending with and taking the place of the 
elaborate ceremonials of its apostate services, 
with the clergy for actors in the churches and 
out of them, as was the case for three or four 
centuries during the Dark Ages, always and 
under all conditions, the theater has proven 
a demoralizing agency. That this arraign- 
ment may not seem too severe, and be cred- 
ited to personal hostility or over zeal in a 
good cause, I will here give the corroborating 
testimony of men whom all must respect. 



40 AMUSEMENTS. 



Chapter V. 

TESTIMONY CONCERNING THE CHARACTER OF THE 
THEATER. 

WE are now to examine the character of 
this ancient institution, whose whitened 
locks, as it stands before us clad in the robes 
of its own histor)^, might awaken our vener- 
ation were it not for the blood-spots on its 
hands, the demon leer in its eye, and the foul 
odors from its filthy raiment proclaiming it 
one of the vile monsters that still lingers on 
the earth because mankind have not had vir- 
tue enough to exterminate it. We will pro- 
ceed by the fair and rational method of calling 
in competent witnesses who have known and 
studied the institution, to testify as to the 
character of the accused for common virtue. 
Passing by the great lights of the Christian 
Church, the martyrs, the regenerators of the 
nations, and the godly fathers and mothers 
whose voices would of course be against the 
accused; passing also those who have made 



CHARACTER OF THEATER. 41 

the theater a source of gain as actors, manag- 
ers, or advocates, knowuig that *'a gift per- 
verteth judgment," I will go into the Avorld's 
high court of philosophers, thinkers, and sages, 
and ask the men revered by all ages to 
testify. 

The first I introduce with an apology to 
the reader for presenting a pagan, and with a 
request to the witness to be careful to say 
nothing to shock the fine moral sensibilities 
of my Christian reader, is the philosopher 
Plato. Hear him : * * The diversions of the 
stage are dangerous to the temper and sobri- 
ety of mind. They rouse the feelings of anger 
and desire too much. Tragedy is prone to 
render men boisterous, and comedy makes 
them buffoons. Thus those passions are cher- 
ished which ought to be checked, virtue loses 
ground, and reason becomes uncertain." Let 
us try another pagan, even though our Chris- 
tian cheeks were made to tingle by the words 
uttered by the master thinker, Plato. Here 
comes Aristotle, one of the world's greatest 
thinkers, dominating pagan and Christian 
thought for many centuries, a man who saw 
deep into the soul and inner life of things. 



42 AMUSExMENTS. 

He declares: ''The law ought to forbid young 
people the seeing of comedies till they are 
proof against debauchery." Solon, the wisest 
of the Greeks, and their lawgiver, forbade 
"theatrical exhibitions as pernicious to the 
popular mind." 

But let us turn from these ancient dream- 
ing Greeks to the more modern and common- 
sense Romans, and hear what they have to 
say. The first shall be the greatest thinker 
of them all, the prince of orators, the power- 
ful advocate, the versatile and elegant writer, 
the incorruptible patriot, the savior and the 
glory of Rome, Cicero. He declares: "Com- 
edy subsists on lewdness," a short sentence, 
but a lightning-stroke from a brain surcharged 
with truth, the shock of which is still felt by 
the forces of evil. We next invite the great 
historian, Livy, to the stand, and ask him, in 
his calm, deliberate way, to tell us what 
occured under one of the Scipios throwing 
light upon this subject. He says: "A theater 
was being erected under the direction of the 
Censors, and Scipio Nasica urged in a motion 
or decree before the senate that the theater 
was a useless establishment, and its exhibi- 



CHARACTER OF THEATER. 43 

tions destructive of good morals. By these 
and similar reasons the senate, feeling them- 
selves to be the guardians of the welfare and 
virtue of the citizens, passed a decree which 
leveled the walls of the unfinished theater to 
the ground." It is also said "that all their 
materials were sold by a common crier. The 
senate passed a law that there should be no 
benches allowed for the audience in any the- 
ater within a mile of the city." We may lift 
our hands in holy horror at this infringement 
of liberty; but remember, dear reader, these 
were unenlightened pagans, and it is highly 
probable they knew no better, the light of the 
nineteenth century not having yet dawned. 
Seneca, the great heathen moralist, says : 
"Nothing is so injurious to good morals as 
the loitering in theaters, for then vice makes 
an insensible approach and steals upon us in 
the disguise of pleasure. " 

Rome has other witnesses ready to testify, 
but I wave them aside, as nothing they could 
say would add to the overwhelming force of 
the testimony already given. If any thing 
more is desired, read it in the history of the 
growth of theaters and gladiatorial exhibitions 



44 AMUSEMENTS. 

in Rome as its virtue declined and its fall 
approached; read it in the light of that con- 
flagration kindled by the bloody Nero, a 
patron of the theater and an actor on the 
stage ; read it in the words of the master his- 
torian, Gibbons, who, among the causes of 
the fall of Rome, names the corruption of the 
people by theatrical exhibitions and shows. 

Let no one attempt to break the force of 
these testimonies by saying that they do not 
apply to the case in hand, since they allude 
to the ancient theater, which all must confess 
was corrupt. The elegant writer, Joseph 
Addison, gives the following testimony upon 
the corrupt character of the English theater 
as compared with the Greek and Roman: 
"Were our English stage but half so virtu- 
ous as that of the Greeks and Romans, we 
should quickly see the influence of it in the 
behavior of all the politer part of mankind. 
It is one of the most unaccountable things 
that the lewdness of our theater should be so 
much complained of, so well exposed, and so 
little redressed."* From the days of Addi- 
son till now the critics have not ceased to 



* Spectator, 446. 



CHARACTER OF THEATER. 45 

bewail the continued demoralization of the 
theater. 

If we descend to modern times we do not 
find the advanced age of the institution win- 
ning for it that respect of the good and great 
which they are accustomed to bestow upon 
virtuous old age. 

If we may accept the testimony of those 
most to be trusted, the theater grows worse, 
rather than better, as it grows older, a strong 
indication that its character is essentially bad. 
Sir Matthew Hale, one of England's most 
honored sons, says "that when he was at 
Oxford University he made great proficiency 
in his studies, but the stage players coming 
thither he was so much corrupted that he 
almost entirely forsook his studies. He then 
came to the solemn resolution that while he 
lived never would he again enter a theater." 
Mr. Wilberforce, known and honored wherever 
freedom unfurls her banner, affirms, "The 
debauchee, the sensualist, the profane, have 
ever found in the theater their chosen resort for 
enjoyment^ He asks: "How can a virtuous 
mind seek pleasure in such a place, amid such 
companions, and from such persons as the 



46 AMUSEMENTS. 

actors and actresses are generally known to 
be?" Sir John Thomkins, in his life of Dr. John- 
son, remarks, "The play-house is the very 
hot-bed of vice, and wherever planted becomes 
surrounded by a halo of brothels." I have 
thus called up the men most honored and 
revered to testify of the character of this insti- 
tution, and they give it with united voice 
such a character as should deny it the patron- 
age and company of every virtuous and right- 
minded person. 

There are many utterances by the legis- 
lative and judicial bodies of England and 
America showing the character of the theater 
in the opinion of patriots and thinkers in more 
recent times. An English judge, in charging 
a jury in London, said: "One play-house ruins 
more souls than fifty churches are able to 
save."* In 1778, when the American colo- 
nies, struggling for independence, felt their 
dependence upon God and their need of his 
aid, Congress passed a law providing for "the 
dismissal from office of any officer of the 
United States who should be found in attend- 



* Judge Bulstrode charging the jury of Middlesex 
(London) April 12, 1718. 



CHARACTER OF THEATER. 47 

ance upon a theater." Soon after the decla- 
ration of independence the following resolution 
was adopted by Congress: 

''Whereas, True rehgion and good morals 
are the only solid foundation of public liberty 
and happiness; 

^'Resolved, That it be and is hereby ear- 
nestly recommended to the several States to 
take the most effective measures for the en- 
couragement thereof, and the suppression of 
theatrical entertainments, horse-racing, gam- 
ing, and such other diversions as are produc- 
tive of idleness, dissipation, and a general 
depravity of principles and manners." 

Our municipal governments have been 
compelled to pass very stringent laws to pro- 
tect society against the evil classes and influ- 
ences that gather about and go out from the 
theater. 

4 



48 AMUSEMENTS. 



Chapter VI. 

THE TESTIMONY OF THE CHURCH. 

IF pagan philosophers, poets, and historians 
speak of the theater as we have heard them 
in the last chapter, what may we expect of 
the Church of Christ but indignant denuncia- 
tion when it comes in sheep's clothing, pre- 
tending to be the friend of virtue, and seeking 
Christian patronage ? With only an occasional 
exception, the Church has faithfully witnessed 
against the monstrous iniquities nourished and 
propagated under this assumed ministry of the 
fine arts. 

It must be confessed with pain, that the 
Roman Catholic and the Greek Churches have 
not stood unitedly with the reformed Churches 
in their opposition to this great evil. In nom- 
inal Christian countries, where the Sabbath is 
a holiday, given up to games, concerts, and 
theatrical exhibitions, in which even the priests 
participate, we could not expect to find a 
lively conscience on this subject. And yet, 



TESTIMONY OF THE CHURCH. 49 

even here, in time of Lent, or great religious 
solemnities, and among the orders making 
special claims to sanctity and religious earnest- 
ness, the theater is forbidden. 

Among the reformed Churches, where the 
Sabbath is held sacred, where a personal re- 
ligious life is enjoined and cultivated, and 
where vigorous efforts are made for the salva- 
tion of the souls of men, there is but one 
voice in regard to the theater. John Calvin 
exterminated it in Geneva, and gave the Pres- 
byterian conscience such a decided tonic on 
this question that ever since his day, when you 
find a good, true Presbyterian, you find an 
uncompromising foe of the theater. John 
Knox did for Scotland what Calvin did for 
Geneva and the continent of Europe, and the 
Scotch Presbyterians are a solid phalanx against 
the theater. Whatever may be true of par- 
ticular congregations or communities, the 
Presbyterian Church has stood like an iron 
wall against the theater and all the grosser 
worldly amusements. There are always some 
people who are neither one thing nor the other 
on any question, and, though, the Presbyte- 
rian Church is an uncomfortable place for such 



50 AMUSEMENTS. 

people, a few of them may have strayed in 
thither. 

The early Methodists imbibed the spiritu- 
ality of the Quakers, the strict morality of the 
Puritans, and the conscientiousness of the 
Presbyterians, cementing these qualities to- 
gether with the best parts of the ritual of the 
Church of England into a strong, world-wide, 
century-enduring structure, which has always 
been understood as a house of the Lord hav- 
ing no fellowship with the theater. John Wes- 
ley found the clergy of his day attending Sun- 
day afternoon races and games, going with the 
people to the play-house, while the masses 
were given over to worldliness and vice, with 
*'no man to care for their souls." Against 
this condition of things he lifted his voice in 
loud and earnest protest, as the large denomi- 
nation of which he, under God, was the 
founder has not ceased to do to this day. 
Methodism has always been a foe to the play- 
house, more by its general spirit of earnest 
piety than by special enactments. To be a 
soundly converted Methodist, ''going on unto 
perfection," to be happy in religion, faithful 



TESTIMONY OF THE CHURCH. 5 1 

to the class-meeting, and earnest in revival 
work for the salvation of souls, has been con- 
sidered, within and without the Church, as 
involving, as a matter of course, strong hos- 
tility to the theater. The general rule in 
the Book of Discipline forbidding " the taking 
such diversions as can not be used in the 
name of the Lord Jesus," has always been in- 
terpreted as a condemnation of the theater. 
In the General Conference held in Brooklyn, 
in 1872, a more explicit rule was adopted for- 
bidding "attending theaters." 

The Baptists stand side by side with the 
Methodists and Presbyterians, while the Con- 
gregationalists and Episcopalians are not far 
behind in the war against "Satan's chapel," — 
the theater. 

* ' An English writer in the time of Charles 
II made a catalogue of authorities against the 
stage, which contains every name of eminence 
in the heathen and Christian world ; it com- 
prehends the united testimony of the Jewish 
and Christian Churches ; the deliberate acts of 
fifty- four ancient and modern, general, na- 
tional, and provincial councils and synods, 



52 AMUSEMENTS. 

both of the Western and Eastern Churches; 
the condemnatory sentence of seventy-one an- 
cient fathers and one hundred and fifty modern 
CathoUc and Protestant authors." 

It may be useful here to give the utter- 
ances of a few of its great leaders to show the 
opinion of the Church in regard to this insti- 
tution. Clement called it, "the chair of pes- 
tilence." Augustine calls it, "a cage of un- 
cleanness and a public school of debauchery." 
Archbishop Tillotson, speaking of the con- 
duct of certain parents, says, ''They are such 
monsters, I had almost said devils, as not to 
know how to give their children good things. 
Instead of bringing them to God's Church, 
they bring them to the devils chapels, play- 
houses, places of debauchery, those schools of 
lewdness and vice." John Wesley says, *'The 
theater not only saps the foundation of all re- 
ligion, but also tends to drinking and de- 
bauchery." 

These testimonies, given without a bribe 
and with no conceivable reason for their utter- 
ance save the conscientious convictions of 
these eminent servants of God, must have 
great weight with all right-minded persons as 



TESTIMONY OF THE CHURCH. 



53 



to the relation of the theater to spiritual relig- 
ion and good morals. 
PoUok says : 

The theater was from the very first 

The favorite haunt of sin; though honest men, 

Some very honest, wise, and worthy men, 

Maintained it might be turned to good account ; 

And so, perhaps, it might, but never was. 

From first to last it was an evil place ; 

And now such things were acted there as made 

The demons blush ; and from the neighborhood 

Angels and holy men trembling, retired. 



54 AMUSEMENTS. 



Chapter VII. 

THE WELL-KNOWN CHARACTER OF ACTORS AND 
ACTRESSES AN OBJECTION TO THE THEATER. 

IF it can be shown that the maintenance of 
the theater requires the corruption of a 
large class of men and women as actors, who 
for hire are required to appear in scenes on 
the stage and in the green-room that surely 
undermine virtue, every pure mind must look 
upon it with horror, even if it were possible 
to show, as it is not, that the contagion could 
not possibly spread from actors to auditors. 
No Christian man who will stop to think of 
the matter can consent to contribute the price 
of a ticket to the fund necessary to hire men 
and women to lives of shame and folly. The 
man who pays the price in such a transaction 
is as guilty as he who accepts it. The giver 
and the receiver of bribes stand on the same 
moral footing. 

It is not here assumed that every actor is 
a vile person, nor that virtue is necessarily 



ACTORS AND ACTRESSES. 55 

excluded from the stage. I gladly recognize 
and proclaim the fact that there have been 
commendable examples of integrity and virtue 
among actors, the more conspicuous and the 
more to be lauded because of the difficulties 
overcome. I assume that the profession is 
such as to demoralize, degrade, and corrupt 
the character, and therefore he must be a 
paragon of virtue who keeps himself pure in 
it. If the ministers, the physicians, or the 
judges of the land were to turn actors and go 
upon the stage, ten years would probably 
find them as corrupt as the present occupants 
of the stage. I have not a word against the 
unfortunate class, driven, beguiled, or howso- 
ever brought to this profession, but I have 
maledictions and curses for the institution that 
has corrupted and destroyed them, and sor- 
rowful rebuke and condemnation for the pro- 
fessing Christians who have contributed to the 
fund that bribed them to their shame and ruin. 
It is not strange that actors become cor- 
rupt. The man who simulates a feeling or 
emotion he does not possess ; who for a price, 
by strength of will or power over his feelings, 
raises abnormal passions and emotions to en- 



56 AMUSEMENTS. 

tertain and please, or who sells himself to act 
an unreal part on the stage or in the open 
field of life, sets at naught and defies those 
laws of God and of human nature by whicli 
good and strong characters are formed. To 
assume that a man may act the part of decep- 
tion, fraud, hypocrisy, cruelty, murder, in- 
temperance, and debauchery, and do it well, 
with heart and brain fully awake and active 
in his theme, and not be corrupted by it is a 
monstrous absurdity. History, no less than 
common sense and philosophy, teaches us that 
when one sells himself to play the clown or 
the mock-hero for public amusement, he trails 
the flag of virtue and grasps hands with in- 
famy. Cicero, in his treatise, '' De Republica," 
informs us that Rome passed a decree by 
which ** common players were expelled their 
tribe, and, like the felons of our penitentia- 
ries, deprived forever of all rights of citizen- 
ship." Another decree was passed called the 
Praetorian edict, ''that whoever appears on 
the stage to speak or act is declared infamous.'" 
The laws of England, from a very early period, 
until recentty spoke of actors as ''rogues, 
vagabonds, and sturdy beggars." 



ACTORS AND ACTRESSES. 57 

These edicts and laws express sufficiently 
the verdict of history as to the character of 
this profession. 

Those who complain most bitterly of such 
an arraignment are the first to justify and 
emphasize it when the occasion arrives. In a 
fashionable boarding-house on Fifth Avenue, 
New York City, there were a number of 
wealthy ladies very fond of the theater, of 
which they were regular patrons. There was 
also a young lady in the same house of fine 
personal qualities, good character, and lady- 
like deportment. It became known to our 
theater-loving ladies that the young lady was 
preparing for the stage. Their indignation 
rose so high that they waited on the propri- 
etor and informed him that the young lady 
must leave the house or they would, on the 
ground that it would injure their reputations 
for it to be known that they associated with 
one who was preparing for the stage. Noth- 
ing was alleged against the young lady's char- 
acter but the well-known character of actors 
and actresses, and the sentiment of the public 
was such that they felt themselves in danger 
from the presence of one in the house who 



58 AMUSEMENTS. 

was even preparing for the stage. The com- 
mon feeling is that when a young man or a 
young lady goes on the stage they are lost to 
good society. There is not a mother who 
would not rather bury her daughter than give 
her to the green-room and the stage. The 
common sentiment has a basis of facts to rest 
upon, and society refuses to receive actors 
unless vouched for, because, as a class, they 
have earned distrust and suspicion. 

A bold and fearless announcement of these 
facts ought to be kept before the public, if 
for no other purpose, to save, if possible, the 
multitude of *' stage struck " young girls and 
boys to be found in every theater-going com- 
munity, many of whom are so unfortunate as 
to have silly, foolish parents who seem not to 
know or care that their children are on the 
way to shame and death. Let the ministry 
imitate the Christian heroism and fidelity of 
the noble Canon Wilberforce in Westminster 
Abbey on the occasion of Sarah Bernhardt's 
visit to London, when he said: "She has 
dared to come to London, bringing her ille- 
gitimate children with her, and flaunting her 
skirts in the very face of royalty." Then, 



ACTORS AND ACTRESSES. 59 

turning to the Prince of Wales, he said : "It 
is the nation's disgrace that Briton's future 
king should so far forget what belongs to the 
dignity of his station that he should visit this 
woman in the theater green-room and speak 
face to face to her in flattering words. " Then, 
in closing, the canon said: *'0 how deeply 
virtuous England regrets the premature death 
of the good Prince Consort! Had he been 
Hving to-day this could never have happened." 
The strongest testimonies to the truth of 
these remarks upon the character of actors as 
a class come from the honorable men and 
women whose exceptional purity and integrity 
in the profession have retained for it the 
respect which still lingers to some degree 
among the intelligent and pure-minded. The 
modern stage has no brighter ornament for 
splendid abilities and pure character than 
Edwin Booth. He declares that he does not 
"permit his wife and daughter to see a play 
without previously ascertaining Its character;" 
that the theater has become * * a mere shop for 
gain, open to every huckster of immoral gim- 
cracks." This well-known criticism of modern 
plays and actors, as well as those of the great 



6o AMUSEMENTS. 

army of critics who make this their business, 
are quite as severe as any I have made in 
these pages. 

Charles Sprague thus expresses the corrup- 
tion of the stage and its actors as it appeared 
to him: 

**Lo! where the stage, the poor, degraded stage, 
Holds its warped mirror to a gaping age ; 
There where to raise the drama's moral tone 
Fool Harlequin usurps Apollo's throne ; 
There where grown children gather round to praise 
The new-vamped legends of their nursery days, 
Where one loose scene shall turn more souls to shame 
Than ten of Channing's lectures can reclaim; 
There 'where in idiot rapture we adore 
The herded vagabonds of every shore; 
Women unsexed, who, lost to woman's pride. 
The drunkard's stagger ape, the bully's stride; 
Pert lisping girls, who, still in childhood's fetters, 
Babble of love, yet barely know their letters ; 
Neat painted mummers mocking nature's shape, 
To prove how nearly man can match an ape; 
Vaulters, who rightly served at home, perchance 
Had dangled from the rope on which they dance; 
Dwarfs, mimics, jugglers, all that yield content, 
Where sin holds carnival and wit keeps lent ; 
Where shoals on shoals the modest million rush, 
One sex to laugh and one to try to blush. 
When mincing Ravenot sports tight pantalettes. 
And turns fops' heads while turning pirouettes; 
There, at each ribald sally, where we hear 



ACTORS AND ACTRESSES. 6i 

The knowing giggle and the scurrile jeer, 
While from the intellectual gallery first 
Rolls the base plaudit, loudest at the worst." 

My argument, then, is that the circus, the 
theater, or any other institution which main- 
tains itself by corrupting the persons it em- 
ploys is of necessity vile in character, and is 
an agency employed by the prince of darkness 
for the ruin of the souls of man. And, further, 
that whoever puts funds into the hands of 
such an institution is ''particeps criminis," 
and is jointly responsible for paying the devil's 
price for a service he can not get without it. 



62 AMUSEMENTS. 



Chapter VIII. 

THE CHARACTER OF THE PLAYS IN USE. 

IT is freely conceded that the theater is not 
necessarily evil, but I am not deaHng with 
ideals, or supposable possibilities, nor with 
abstract theories, but with a visible fact and 
reality, a tangible something, called the thea- 
ter, which touches the every-day life of the 
masses in our great cities, which every man 
may put under the microscope or into the cru- 
cible and study for himself. The evil is not 
in the curtains, the costumes, the scenery, 
the stage, nor the acting ; neither is it wholly 
in the fact that the only object is to amuse 
and entertain. It is chiefly in the fact that 
immoral and impure plays are put upon the 
stage, corrupting both actors and auditors. 
Take the popular pieces for a season in any 
of our cities, analyze and study them, and 
what are they? I will not even give you the 
name or outline of any one of them, but if 
you doubt the truth of what I am about to 



THEATRICAL PLAYS. 63 

say, I challenge you to buy them, which you 
can do anywhere for ten or fifteen cents apiece, 
and examine for yourself.^ 

You will find the majority of these, studies 
in vice, shrewd apologies for crime, an attempt 
to make shame honorable, to give lying and 



* Dr. J. M. Buckley, editor of the Christian Advocate^ 
New York, made a careful examination of more than sixty 
plays produced in "the best theaters of New York" dur- 
ing three years, and gives the results of his research in his 
admirable book on, " Christians and the Theater." More 
than fifty of these plays he declares to be corrupt, and sus- 
tains this assertion by giving the names and outlines of 
some of the most popular of the number. Dr. Herrick 
Johnson made a similar study of the plays presented in the 
four best theaters of Chicago in the Fall and Winter of 
1881, and published the results in his "Plain Talk about 
the Theater." "At Hooley's, thirteen evenings were 
given to the so-called standard drama, and seventy-six 
evenings to trash. At McVicker's twelve evenings were 
given to Miss Anderson, six to Joe Jefferson, twelve to 
Denman Thompson, and forty-eight to trash. At Haver- 
ly's, eighteen evenings to the standard drama, and fifty- 
one to trash. At the Grand Opera, all the seventy-nine 
evenings to trash." In the three best theaters of Indian- 
apolis for the Winter of 1 88 1-2, the showing is even 
worse ; the aggregate being, ten nights for the legitimate 
drama and one hundred and seven for what Dr. Johnson 
calls '' trash." If the best theaters are thus corrupt, what 
may be said of the others? 



64 AMUSEMENTS. 

falsehood the respect due to truth, to give 
robbery and theft the immunity and protection 
claimed for honesty, to elevate the profligate 
rake to a favorite of society, to make the se- 
ducer a gallant hero, and to subvert the whole 
order set up in God's law and by pure Chris- 
tian society. The heroes of the stage are 
eminent as they excel in irregularities, in 
cunning duplicity, prodigality, and passion. 
These are the qualities set forth in the most 
favorable light, securing favor, preferment, 
and prosperity; while virtue, honesty, sobri- 
ety, and piety are made ridiculous by being 
associated with stupidity and dullness in some 
blockhead, with shameless hypocrisy, or with 
disheartening misfortune and failure. The 
man of low, base character is always reveal- 
ing some unexpected noble quality ; while 
the man of professed virtue and religion always 
surprises you by some base deed or by down- 
right hypocrisy. Vice is hailed with applause, 
virtue with hisses. Gambling, drunkenness, 
profanity, and libertinism are considered as 
chivalric weaknesses, rather to be regretted, 
and yet to be expected in ''a really good 
fellow," while intelligence is ranked as cool 



THEATRICAL PLAYS. 6$ 

villainy, honesty as stupidity, virtue as an out- 
ward garb for greater security in vile prac- 
tices, and religion as a sham and pretense. It 
is precisely on the plane of the argument 
criminals always make in their defense. The 
thief says, ''all men steal, the merchant in a 
mean, sneaking way, by overcharging, I, in 
an open, manly way." So says the play. 
The gambler says, * * I use my brain power 
just as the lawyer or the physician, for after 
all every business is but a game of chance ; 
therefore all men are gamblers in some form." 
The libertine says, "There is no such thing 
as virtue, the only difference is some are a 
little more discreet than others." These are 
the principles taught in most of the popular 
plays, and they are the principles discussed 
in the haunts of bad men and vile women 
wherever found. Such teaching tends to de- 
stroy the very idea of virtue, to wreck all 
confidence in human nature, to obliterate 
moral distinctions, and infiltrates in this soft, 
subtle way the ideas of debauchery and crime. 
The sublime plays of Shakespeare will not 
hold an average theater audience, and when 
presented, it must be with such accompani- 



66 AMUSEMENTS. 

ments as make the appeal to the lower and 
baser nature, not found in the words of the 
great master, by which the patronage of the 
multitudes is maintained. 

If any one supposes this to be an extreme 
view, the result of hasty or partial investiga- 
tion, let him consider the strong words of a 
great scholar and writer, who surely will not 
be accused of being a Puritan. In Taine's 
chapter on the theater of Charles II we have 
these words: ''The audiences of Shakespeare 
and Beaumont and Fletcher were in that tran- 
sient and strained condition in which the im- 
agination, adult and pure, laden with desire, 
curiosity, force, develops man all at once, and 
in that man the most exquisite feelings. The 
roisterers took the place of these. . . . 
Authors laid it down as a rule that all women 
were impudent hussies and all men were brutes. 
Debauchery in their hands became a matter 
of course ; nay, more, a matter of good taste ; 
they profess it. Rochester and Charles II 
could quit the theater highly edified, more 
convinced than they were before that virtue 
was only a pretense, the pretense of clever 
rascals who wanted to sell themselves dear." 



THEATRICIAL PLAYS. 67 

Henry Ward Beecher, who I think will not 
be accused of Puritanism, in commenting on 
these words, says : * ' Some devils are even 
blacker than they are painted. This one was ; 
blacker than he can be painted. And it took 
less than a century for the drama to descend 
from Shakespeare to Wycherley. Keep on 
* the safe side of certainty.* He that doubt- 
eth is condemned if he eateth. Avoid the 
dangerous. If you do not know whether to 
go or stay at home, stay at home. It is 
better sometimes to go hungry than to eat 
poisoned food. The evil of a licentious pic- 
ture does not depart when the eye turns from 
it ; the photograph remains in the brain. The 
evil of a vicious suggestion does not depart 
when the bell rings down the curtain. No 
man can touch pitch and not be defiled. It 
is better to lose all of Shakespeare than to 
suffer the contagion for a single night of some 
of the modern dramas." 



68 AMUSEMENTS. 



Chapter IX. 

THE THEATER'S DEFENSE. 

IT Avould scarcely be possible to find an indi- 
vidual or an institution so base as to have 
no quality worthy of praise. The courts of 
the land, as well as public opinion, condemn 
a man even to death upon proof of a single 
transgression, no matter what good qualities 
may be truthfully alleged for him. 

One sin condemns the whole character, as 
one rent does the garment, and it is useless to 
allege good qualities in the face of such a 
condemnation. A friend remarked to an 
elderly lady of a very charitable disposition 
that he never knew any one so bad that she 
could not speak of something good in him, 
and that even if the devil should appear she 
would doubtless have some good to say of 
him. *'Yes," she said, "I have always heard 
he is very industrious; they surely can not 
accuse him of being lazy." 



THE THEATER'S DEFENSE. 6g 

It may be admitted that the theater has its 
excellent qualities, without implying an ap- 
pro;i/^al of its general character, any more than 
the above mention of a good quality in the 
'* prince of darkness" is to be accepted as a 
certificate of good character for him. 

It is alleged tliat the theater is the patron 
and friend of the fine arts. The claim is freely 
conceded. Music, painting, sculpture, and 
oratory with poetry have all been invited to 
the stage, have grown in popular favor and 
power because of it, and in turn have given 
to the stage the influence it has wielded in 
society. This, however, does not relieve the 
theater of the indictment brought against it 
for bad moral character and influence. To 
allege that a man is a fine musician is no 
answer to the charge of murder; to say that a 
man is highly accomplished and thoroughly 
educated is no answer to the charge of brib- 
ery ; and to say that the theater is a patron of 
the fine arts is not an answer to the charge of 
bad moral character. 

It is claimed that the theater inculcates 
many valuable lessons. This is certainly true. 
Even vile plays, full of the worst moral influ- 



70 AMUSEMENTS. 

ences, may have in them many excellent 
passages and characters. Even the devil, in 
his interviews with our first parents, with 
Christ, and concerning Job, spoke some truths, 
quoted a little Scripture, and gave some val- 
uable hints on questions of practical life, but 
they were only shrewd disguises in his effort 
to hurl his victims into the pit. If a vile and 
disreputable person or institution is charitable 
to the poor and unfortunate, as is often the 
case, so far from atoning for vice, it only 
makes it more apparent, as the lightning flash 
makes more sensible the darkness which it 
relieves for but a moment. 

It is further claimed that the theater is an 
educator of the ignorant masses. This can be 
true, if at all, to a very limited extent. The 
plays in common use contain a smaller per 
cent of knowledge than may be found of solid 
nutriment in the intoxicating drinks of the 
country. Even if the claim could be allowed 
it would be but a doubtful encomium upon 
the institution. The ox that is fattened to be 
killed owes few thanks for his good feeding, 
and the fish that is taken makes no mention 
of the excellence of the worm used for bait. 



THE THEATER'S DEFENSE. 7 1 

If the knowledge imparted is sandwiched with 
folly and vice it is only a disguise for a deadly 
poison. 

It is claimed for the theater that it affords 
the amusement and recreation needed after 
hard toil. If it would do this without demor- 
alizing and destroying ; if it would please 
without raising vile passions ; entertain without 
insinuating lust and impurity; amuse without 
profanity and vulgarity; afford diversions with- 
out infusing poisons; give rest to tired brain 
and muscle without doing violence to con- 
science and moral affections, then would it 
indeed be an angel of light. The theater, like 
intoxicating drinks, amuses, excites, and enter- 
tains, but the other half of the story is too 
dark and terrible for human words to utter. 

It is also said that the theater has greatly 
aided the growth of good literature. The 
names of Sophocles and Shakespeare, if there 
were no others, are enough to justify the 
claim. The fact, however, that the theater 
has been able to offer such prizes as would 
stimulate genius to its best efforts is no argu- 
ment upon its moral character or its fitness as 
a place of resort for Christian people. High- 



72 AMUSEMENTS. 

way robbery, assassination, and duelling have 
done much to improve the manufacture of 
pistols, knives, and all kinds of arms used for 
personal defense, and yet they are everywhere 
condemned and execrated. Whatever may 
be said of the past services of the stage to 
good literature, its mission seems to have 
ended, for there is not a single living writer 
for the stage who produces any thing but low, 
Avorthless trash. The art critics, who have no 
special concern for the moral influence of the 
theater, bewail in loudest terms the sad decline 
of the drama, its low intellectual, artistic, 
and moral character. They are the weeping 
Jeremiahs of the age, and have cause enough 
for their tears, for their "holy city" also "has 
become a harlot." 



MORAL INFLUENCES. 73 



Chapter X. 

THE MORAL INFLUENCES OF THE THEATER. 

THERE is about every person and institu- 
tion an indefinable something- called moral 
influence. Like the odor from a flower-gar- 
den or a mass of putrefaction, it penetrates 
the surrounding atmosphere, and though in- 
visible and intangible, it is distinctly recog- 
nized and felt. It may not be traced to any 
single act or element of character, it may be 
the mystic aroma of hidden unseen qualities, 
but like a deadly malaria, floating about in 
invisible particles in the air, it may carry death 
to the most healthy, robust natures. The 
oldest and wisest teachers of the race — fathers, 
mothers, and philosophers — have all warned 
the young against the danger of evil associa- 
tions that would bring them into contact with 
vice, real or represented. If God had not 
spoken upon the subject, we would need but 
to look about at the wide spreading, desolate 
ruins, where the fires of passion, kindled by a 



74 AMUSEMENTS. 

spark from a neighboring conflagration, have 
eaten up every thing that was beautiful or of 
vahie, leaving only ashes and blackened walls, 
for the most eloquent proclamation of the 
truth on this subject. 

We are by nature strongly inclined to the 
imitation of others ; and if passion or impulse 
aid this inclination, its strength is doubled; 
and if the fiery impetuosity and indiscretion 
of youth add vehemence to the passion, it 
will be well-nigh uncontrollable. 

We are strongly affected by what we see, 
the image of a thing painted on the 7'etina 
of the eye, thence transferred to the mind 
and to the heart. The image of a thing is 
next to the reality, and hence it is that the 
image of vice, acted or real, carried through 
the eye to the mind and heart makes such 
a powerful impression, and so often, like a 
living seed lodged in the warm soil of the 
heart, springs up into reality after the kind 
of that from which it sprang. To look upon 
vice must have one of two effects, either to 
corrupt the mind, securing its toleration, at 
least so far that it will silently look upon it ; 
or it will strengthen the soul in virtue by 



MORAL INFLUENCES. 75 

arousing its indignation, and protest against 
it. How is it possible to sit by the hour 
watching the development of an intrigue of 
unholy love, of robbery, or murder, seasoned 
with profanity and coarse vulgarity, to seek it 
by choice, knowing beforehand the character 
of the play, and not be corrupted by it ? To 
sit by silently of choice, while scenes of vice 
are being enacted, with no protest against 
them, is to aid them with our assent and 
sanction. The attendant upon Church serv- 
ices is understood to sanction and approve 
them by his presence, and to contribute his 
influence toward making effectual the princi- 
ples there taught ; and the same is true of 
attendance upon the theater. What mind can 
look upon the half-dress, the indecent atti- 
tudes and postures, the lascivious looks and 
embraces, and the unfolding of a plot for the 
corruption and overthrow of the pure and in- 
nocent, uttering not a word of protest nor 
withdrawing from it as from a fatal contagion, 
and remain untainted ? The old lines of Pope 
are so true to human nature and history as to 
be worthy of being inscribed over the door-way 
of every theater as a warning to all who enter: 



76 AMUSEMENTS. 

"Vice is a monster of so frightful mien 
As, to be hated, needs but to be seen ; 
Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face, 
We first endure, then pity, then embrace." 

To consent to look upon vice without a 
protest against it, is the first step to moral 
degeneracy. 

The young may be pure as angels, as their 
parents and friends claim for them, but they 
have passions and propensities quietly slum- 
bering, innocent and inoffensive as gunpowder 
when let alone, but one spark of fire from a 
like passion in .another may produce an ex- 
plosion rending into fragments all that was 
beautiful and lovely. A gentleman of distinc- 
tion testifies to what has been the experience 
of vast numbers of young men. When a boy 
he spent some time in the city with a friend, 
giving some fifteen minutes one night to look- 
ing upon vile scenes. He says : * * The poison 
took effect, the sin left its mark. I can not 
erase the effects of the impure thoughts which 
in that quarter of an hour were lodged in my 
heart, and which (may God forgive me) I 
harbored there. I can and do pray against 
the sin, and for God's grace to conquer it; 



MORAL INFLUENCES. 77 

but it IS a thorn in my flesh and still causes 
me great bitterness and anguish. Young 
men, as a lover of your souls, I tell you in 
all sincerity that there is nothing which I 
would not willingly give to have the veil of 
obHvion cast over those corrupt scenes and 
sentiments which still haunt me like foul spec- 
ters." A few minutes in a pest-house may 
be enough to blight the whole life, and one 
touch of impurity may poison the soul for 
time and eternity. 

It is no credit to a man's head or to his heart 
for him to say he can look upon such scenes 
unmoved. Human nature is the same every- 
where, and my complaint is not that men 
allow themselves to be moved by such scenes, 
so much as that they allow them to come into 
their presence. Unless one is naturally defi- 
cient, made of putty rather than of tingling 
nerves and delicate sensibilities, what moves 
the common mass of men will move him ; for 
the most gifted and highly endowed are often 
the most sensitive and capable of impressions. 
It is the design of the play to excite the emo- 
tions and raise the passions, and if in any case 
it fails, it must be because the actors have over- 



78 AMUSEMENTS. 

estimated the intelligence and capacities of 
the audience. A good Hstener, Hke a good 
actor, must enter into the spirit of the piece, 
follow the actor in his feelings, passions, and 
sentiments, and for the time by the power of 
his imagination transform fiction into reality. 
He is a dull, stupid, soulless fellow, who looks 
upon the scenes of the stage with no kindling 
feelings or rising passions. One has forcibly 
said of the stage: ** Wickedness is made to 
give amusement. Lying, drunkenness, and 
adultery are made a cause of sport and the 
occasion of hilarity, and crimes that would call 
down the wratii of God on their perpetrators 
are systematically made to provoke laughter." 
Laughing at crime is a mild way of taking in 
its infection, and a sure approach to a recon- 
ciliation and lasting friendship with it. If two 
people who have long been bitter enemies can 
be brought to indulge in a hearty laugh to- 
gether, what remains necessary to a reconcil- 
iation will be ea-sily disposed of. An uncor- 
rupted mind has only scorn for vice, and is 
already fallen in feeling when it consents to 
laugh at it. 

This silent, insensible, indirect influence is 



MORAL INFLUENCE. 79 

one of the most deadly and dangerous forces 
of evil. Vice will rarely succeed in a bold, 
open attack upon virtuous minds ; it will be 
rejected with scorn. It may, however, by 
soft, gentle, insensible approaches, accustom 
the mind to its presence, soften resentment, 
insinuate its charms, blind the eyes to its 
character and consequences, and at last win 
marvelous victories over natures supposed to 
be proof against it. The continual dropping 
of water will change the face of solid granite. 
These positions are sustained by the testimony 
of theater goers, that what at first greatly 
shocked them, they come directly to view un- 
moved and with perfect indifference, showing 
the deterioration of the finer feelings. 
6 



80 AMUSEMENTS. 



Chapter XI. 

THE THEATER AND CHRISTIAN LIFE. 

THE present dangers to Christian life are 
very different in character from those which 
confronted the apostles and early followers of 
our Lord. Persecution then sought to drive 
them from the field, but it soon appeared that 
instead of hindering this only helped the 
growing cause. Satan is shrewd enough when 
one scheme will not succeed to try another; 
being unable to subdue the Church by open 
assault he adopted the more dangerous method 
of endeavoring to beguile it from its fidel- 
ity. The world laid aside its hostile armor, 
dressed itself in the most pleasing attire, 
bribed the fine arts as handmaids to aid its 
performance, and now invites the Church with 
many*professions and pretensions of good will 
and laudable purposes to a suspension of hos- 
tihties and to a fraternal compromise. 

The theater is one of the most powerful 



THEATER AND CHRISTIAN LIFE. 8l 

elements of this new policy, presenting the 
combined products of many minds in such 
combinations as to dazzle, charm, and capti- 
vate the soul. It is not strange that Christians 
feel strongly drawn toward the theater; it has 
a great advantage over the pulpit or platform, 
where the speaker must both originate and 
render the thought. The most gifted intellect 
is employed to write the play ; the actor studies 
and practices attitude, posture, and elocution; 
the master of costumes carefully designs and 
arranges them to add force to the expression; 
the artist designs and puts on canvas or in 
statuary such scenery as will best help the 
impression to be made; the musician, com- 
bining the results of many minds in his de- 
partment, prepares such moving strains as are 
at his command; and all these amid a blaze 
of lights and a flutter of expectation rush 
upon the stage to overpower and captivate 
the audience, or to intoxicate them by the 
excessive draughts of excitement and passion 
presented to their lips. It is the devil's at- 
tempt to play the part of the ** spider with 
the fly" toward the Church. 

If we look at a few facts lying on the sur- 



82 AMUSEMENTS. 

face of things we can be left in no doubt as 
td the relation of the Church and the thea- 
ter. One of these facts is, that the attendants 
upon the theater from within the Church are 
of the less spiritual and earnest portion of its 
membership. They are of those who have little 
to say about Christian experience, ' ' whose 
delight is" not "in the law of the Lord," 
even in reading it, who are not specially fond 
of the social meetings of the Church for prayer 
and religious conference, who are not very 
earnest in the work of saving souls or in visit- 
ing and praying with the sick and dying. 
They may be efficient in conducting sociables, 
managing fairs, attending to the financial in- 
terests of the Church, and doing many good 
things, but in those elements of Christian life 
which give best proof of genuine devotion, 
reflect most honor on the Gospel and bring 
most glory to Christ, they are deficient. 

Another fact is, that the earnest, faithful, 
truly devout Christian has no desire to go to 
the theater; indeed, loathes and abhors it for 
its moral impurities, much as he may appre- 
ciate its artistic excellence. It is a simple 
fact of history, of human experience, that a 



THEATER AND CHRISTIAN LIFE. 83 

high State of Christian life excludes the thea- 
ter. To every true Christian religious duties 
are first, and when these are discharged in 
the home, in society, in the Church, and at 
the bedside of the sick and dying, there is 
but little time and certainly no desire left for 
theater-going. 

Another fact is that the world regards 
theater-going inconsistent with the Christian's 
professions. He professes to live, ''not to 
please himself, but Him who died for him;" 
not to secure the pleasures of this world, but 
the glories of heaven ; not to seek pleasure 
and the favor of the world, but a likeness to 
Christ and a fitness for his society; not to 
corrupt his associates by a bad example, but 
to lead them to Christ and to those safeguards 
of good character found only in his religion. 
Theater-going does not harmonize with such 
a profession. Read the covenant under which 
we are admitted to holy baptism: "Dost 
thou renounce the devil and all his works, 
the vain pomp and glory of the world, with 
all covetous desires of the same, and the car- 
nal desires of the flesh, so that thou wilt not 
follow or be led by them?" "I renounce 



84 AMUSEMENTS. 

them all." Who can lay his hand on his 
heart before God, take this solemn covenant, 
and go away to the play-house? 

Attendance upon the theater destroys the 
Christian's influence for good. The uncon- 
verted do not apply to the theater-going 
Christian for council and prayer when awak- 
ened to a sense of their need of salvation. 
A young lady very sick, fearing she would 
die unsaved, asked for a minister. She was 
asked if the Presbyterian elder just across the 
way would not do as well. "No," she said, 
**he goes to the theater. I am afraid his 
prayers would do me no good." All classes 
feel that such persons are not the best guides 
to the kingdom of God. The world ridicules 
and scorns them, and the Church distrusts and 
mourns over them. 

One may say, "It does me no harm to go 
to the theater." But, if a true Christian, you 
are bound to go further and ask, "Does it 
do others harm ? Does it destroy my power 
over them for good? Does it influence them 
to go to places safe enough to me, but sure to 
prove their destruction?" Paul's doctrine of 
Christian expediency, and the command not 



THEATER AND CHRISTIAN LIFE. 85 

**to let our good be evil spoken of," certainly 
apply to those Christians who think they may 
safely go to the theater. Paul would **eat 
no meat" and "drink no wine so long as the 
world standeth" if either made another to 
stumble or fall. While this doctrine may be 
abused and carried to an extreme, every 
Christian conscience must acknowledge its 
claims. The words of Hannah More have 
great force and truth upon this subject. She 
says: *'I do not hesitate for a moment to 
pronounce the theater to be one of the broad- 
est avenues that lead to destruction ; fascinat- 
ing no doubt it is, but on that account the 
more delusive and the more dangerous. Let 
a young man once acquire a taste for this 
species of entertainment, and yield himself up 
to its gratification, and he is in great danger of 
becoming a lost character, rushing upon his 
ruin. All the evils that can waste his prop- 
erty, corrupt his morals, blast his reputation, 
impair his health, embitter his life, and destroy 
his soul, lurk in the purlieus of the theater. 
Vice in every form lives and moves and has 
its being there. Myriads have cursed the 
hour when they first exposed themselves to 



86 AMUSEMENTS. 

the contamination of the stage. Light and 
darkness are not more opposed to each other 
than the Bible and the play-book. If the one 
be good the other must be evil. If the Scrip- 
tures are to be obeyed, the theater must be 
avoided. The only way to justify the stage, 
as it is, as it has ever been and is ever likely 
to be, is to condemn the Bible; the same in- 
dividual can not defend both." 



CAN IT BE REFORMED? 87 



Chapter XII. 

"CAN THE THEATER BE REFORMED ?" 

IN the preceding pages I have been deal- 
ing with the actual facts of an existing 
institution, and not with an abstraction, as 
an ideal possibility. Men say, '*Yes, the 
theater as it is merits censure, but we must 
reform it and make it what it should be." 
To this I only have to say, present your re- 
formed theater and I will rejoice with you, 
or propose a plausible method of securing it, 
and I will join you. It would be a great 
blessing to society if a pure theater could be 
maintained, where the people might be amused 
without being corrupted, and where knowl- 
edge might be imparted in a form that would 
give pleasure and afford recreation. That such 
a great and beneficent institution might be 
brought into the field to re-enforce the agen- 
cies at work for the elevation of society has 
long been a favorite dream with me, as it has 
been with many others. As we look carefully 



88 AMUSEMENTS. 

at it, however, the problem becomes involved 
and difficult, and up to this time, at least, 
a practical solution has proved impossible. 
**Time proves all things," and it has given 
some light upon this question. Practical ex- 
periment settles all questions; theories melt 
away before it, as mist before the rising sun. 
The reformation of the theater has been 
tried by the most gifted sons of genius, under 
the most favorable circumstances, with large 
sums of money to sustain the undertaking, at 
various periods during the last two thousand 
years, and every effort has proved a disas- 
trous failure. If in the ordinary affairs of 
life a certain achievement should seem de- 
sirable and possible, and capable men with 
adequate means at their command should 
undertake it and fail, and if the effort should 
be renewed again and again by the most 
gifted men for a period of two thousand 
years with uniform failure, it would be ac- 
cepted as a conclusive practical argument 
that the thing itself is impossible. Socrates 
attempted to reform the theater and failed. 
The Church in the middle ages made the 
attempt, but instead of reforming the theater, 



CAN IT BE REFORMED? 8g 

the theater corrupted the Church.- Hannah 
More tried it ; wrote several plays herself to 
aid the good design, but lived long enough 
to abandon all hope and effort for the impos- 
sible reform. Sir Wm. Windham, the friend 
and CO laborer of Wilberforce, the philanthro- 
pist, threw all his strength into a similar effort, 
but with no better success. The great and 
gifted Channing was equally unsuccessful in 
Boston. It is said that all the leading theaters 
of Philadelphia were started in an effort at re- 
form, which lasted no longer than was neces- 
sary to get an expression from the patrons of 
the theater as to the character of the plays 
they were willing to patronize. In New York 
the splendid genius of Booth was employed 
in this Utopian scheme, and the magnificent 
structure that bears his name stands as a mon- 
ument over the grave of his buried hopes 
and defeated plans. The great actor, Henry 
Irving, is at this time making a vigorous effort 
to sustain the ideal theater in London, but let 
the frosts of time touch him and it, and the 
decay and death that have overtaken all simi- 
lar efforts will fall upon this. 

Under all these efforts, instead of improv- 



90 AMUSEMENTS. 

ing, the theater has steadily grown worse. 
Addison declares that the theater of his day 
was not ''half so virtuous as that of poor pagan 
Greece and Rome," while the critics of to- 
day testify to its continued demoralization. 
The New York Evening Post, in a recent edi- 
torial on "Our Stage as it is," says: "There 
has probably been a greater mass of meretri- 
cious rubbish set on the New York stage dur- 
ing the last ten years than during the whole 
of its existence. We do not, of course, refer 
solely to pieces that appeal to the baser in- 
stincts, but to the whole body of sensational 
or emotional products, to the feverish slop of 
a French melodrama." Another leading jour- 
nal says: "Twenty- five years ago such an ex- 
hibition as is nowadays nightly made in this 
class of amusements (comic opera) in the most 
matter of fact way, would have gone nigh to 
landing the whole party in the police station." 
But why should all efforts at reform fail ? 
Is the theater necessarily evil? Must it of 
necessity grow worse as it grows older? Ex- 
perience teaches that if it exists at all, it must 
be by descending to play upon the vile and 
low passions. Where it does this there is 



CAN IT BE REFORMED? 91 

sufficient patronage to sustain it, where it does 
not it is driven into bankruptcy for the want 
of patronage. The people will support a vile 
theater, while they will let a pure one perish. 
Philosophize about it as we may, this is the 
well attested fact of history, worth more to 
true thinkers than any amount of theorizing 
and speculation. 

The very office of the institution makes its 
reformation difficult, if not impossible. Its 
office is to reproduce scenes from actual life, 
so as to excite and raise the passions; it must 
excite or it can not hold its audiences. Noth- 
ing proves so exciting to the masses as an in- 
trigue of unholy love, a scheme of fraud or 
cool villainy carried out with a strong hand ; 
the disclosure of concealed vice in the lives of 
professing Christians, or the wild orgies .of 
dissipation and folly. The masses will not 
pay the price of a ticket to see the beauties 
of virtue, the rewards of honest toil, the re- 
spect due to manly integrity, the quiet hap- 
piness of a pure home, or the peaceful decline 
of virtuous old age put upon the stage ; these 
may be seen every day without cost, are ex- 
pected as a matter of course, and have no 



92 AMUSEMENTS. 

power to excite the passions. There must be 
violence, irregularities, enormities, surprising 
combinations and disclosures, vile suggestions, 
and powerful appeals to the passions and emo- 
tions. The nature of things seems thus to 
determine the course of the theater if it is to 
live by public patronage. 

If, as is claimed, the theater ''holds up the 
glass to nature," and reflects only what actu- 
ally occurs in life, it is not thereby vindicated. 
The reproduction of the vices and follies of 
society before the eyes of the young is the 
most successful way of propagating them, as I 
have shown in former pages. There are also 
many things, innocent and right in themselves, 
which are by nature and common custom re- 
manded to privacy, the representation of which 
in public must be highly demoralizing. Many 
things pure and right in themselves, are pun- 
ishable by law, if brought out of that privacy 
to which they belong. It is corrupting to 
**hold up the glass to nature," and make 
public what belongs to privacy, and the ex- 
citement of the play is largely the result of 
this perversion of nature. 

That the theater is not, and can not, be 



CAN IT BE REFORMED? g^ 

true to nature, though true to fact, appears 
from another view. Events can not be rep- 
resented as they occurred, giving proper rec- 
ognition to the important element, time. The 
transactions of years must be crowded into a 
few minutes ; transitions, which in nature are 
gradual and smooth, must be made suddenly 
and with a shock to the feeling?! Occur- 
rences for which nature slowly prepares the 
way, burst upon us with a suddenness that 
startles and overwhelms ; and the exciting 
events of a life, separated by long intervals in 
natural experience, are crowded into a single 
evening, and the mind intoxicated with these 
unnatural draughts till rational thinking be- 
comes impossible. In these whirlwinds of 
excitement and passion, the birth, courtship, 
marriage, divorce, remarriage, bankruptcy, 
old age, and death of one or more parties are 
all portrayed to the Qxcited feelings, producing 
an actual intoxication of excitement in the 
highest degree perilous to good morals and in- 
tellectual equilibrium. 

It is further claimed that the fictitious 
excitement of even good and pure emotions 
and sympathies reacts unfavorably upon the 



94 AMUSEMENTS. 

character. To be moved to tears of sympa- 
thy, where there is no real suffering, and 
where aid can not be given and is not needed, 
has a hardening effect upon the heart. To 
raise emotions and passions with no suitable 
opportunity to express them in words or con- 
duct, and by fictitious means, simply to 
please and entertain, is contrary to the order, 
of nature, and must be corrupting. There are 
many practical difficulties in the way of reform- 
ing the theater that need not be mentioned, as 
what I have already presented seems sufficient 
to close the argument. 



THE DANCE IN HISTORY. 95 



Chapter XIII. 

THE DANCE IN HISTORY. 

THE dance has woven itself into human his- 
tory with a great variety of figures and 
colors, changing always to suit the spirit of 
the age in which it appeared. In the early 
ages it was devout, appearing in the garb of 
religion as the minister of God. The Hebrews 
in their heroic age were accustomed to ex- 
press the storms of religious joy and emotion 
which sometimes swept their souls in its 
rhythmic movements. On their solemn anni- 
versaries and at the commemoration of some 
special token of divine goodness or favor, it 
was thought proper for a company of women, 
volunteering their services for the purpose, to 
express and stimulate the common joy by 
dancing. When "the horse and the rider 
were cast into the sea," and Israel had escaped 
the pursuing Egyptians to see them no more 
forever, ''Miriam, the prophetess, the sister 
of Aaron, took a timbrel in her hand^ and all 
7 



g6 AMUSEMENTS. 

the women went out after her with timbrels 
and dances. And Miriam answered them, 
"Sing ye to the Lord, for he hath triumphed 
gloriously; the horse and his rider hath he 
thrown into the sea." It was not limited to 
the women, but in cases of great religious 
enthusiasm men also were caught up and 
whirled along by the gusts of religious joy 
and fervor in the regular movements of the 
dance. Thus it was that King David "danced 
with all his might before the Lord" on the 
occasion of the ark being brought up to Jeru- 
salem. In many places, in the Scriptures the 
dance is recognized as a proper religious cere- 
mony, but it is nowhere approved as a social 
amusement, apart from its religious uses. I 
would cheerfully give the largest liberty to 
all to ' * dance with all their might before the 
Lord" as a religious ceremony, if their zeal 
and fervor of love to God prompts them to it. 
Form the "sets" in every parlor, collect the 
dancers in every public hall, let the theaters 
be taken for the purpose ; and if there is not 
room enough, give up the churches, and let all 
the people "dance before the Lord" with 
joyful thanksgiving and shouts of praise, the 



THE DANCE IN HISTORY. 97 

men and women appearing in separate com- 
panies as among the Hebrews. Such a dance 
would indicate the dawn of the millennium, 
and would soon be as unpopular as an ordi- 
nary prayer -meeting. The modern social 
dance is as little like that of the Hebrews as 
the theater is like the temple that stood on 
Mount Moriah ; the glory of God fills the one, 
and the lusts of the flesh the other. 

Among pagans, as well as among the serv- 
ants of the true God, the dance was at first 
used only in religious worship. It was so 
used among the Greeks; and Plato states that, 
among the Egyptians, dancing was never an 
amusement, and gives it as his opinion that 
it never should be employed except in divine 
worship. In early times those who perverted 
it from a sacred and religious use were con- 
sidered "profane and infamous." Among the 
Greeks it began, as did the theater, in the 
feasts of Bacchus, the wine- god, and these 
three playmates in childhood — the dance, the 
theater, and strong drink — have never parted 
company, but arm in arm have come down 
through the centuries the allied enemies of 
**the three graces." 



98 AMUSEMENTS. 

In the days of Roman greatness and luxury 
the dance degenerated, as it had ah-eady done 
in other countries, into a social amusement. It 
was even then considered beneath the dignity 
of a reputable person to dance, as the well 
known words of Cicero indicate, where he 
says: *'No one dances unless he is either 
drunk or mad." Disreputable persons hired 
themselves as dancers for the amusement of 
those who were willing to pay the price, while 
the haughty Roman nobility held themselves 
aloof from participation in such an exercise. 
Finding thus an open door into ''society" 
through the corruptions of pagan Rome, which 
had unbolted every door of safety and wel- 
comed the destroyers of the "eternal city" 
to their work, "society" has ever since wel- 
comed and harbored, as a distinguished guest, 
its deadly foe. Long since divorced by relig- 
ion for its infidelities, it has sought and 
obtained a second alliance with "society," 
which has condoned its offenses and allows it 
such liberties as it desires. 



TESTIMONY OF THE CHURCH. 99 



Chapter XIV. 

THE TESTIMONY OF THE CHURCH AGAINST THE 
DANCE. 

SO completely has the dance apostatized 
from its ancient religious character that 
the Church now recognizes it as one of its 
most dangerous foes. All branches of the 
Church unite in warning the young and all 
who wish to maintain a godly life against 
its insidious charms. The Roman Catholic 
Church, lax as it may seem to be on many 
moral questions, has been driven, by the ob- 
served evil influences of the dance, to forbid 
it in many of its most popular forms. The 
Episcopal Church, whatever may be allowed 
in administration, in the declarations of its 
representative bodies, condemns it. The Pres- 
byterian, the Methodist, the Baptist, and, 
indeed, all evangelical Churches, have borne 
their testimony to the perils to vital God- 
liness lurking in the purHeus of the social 
dance. 



lOO AMUSEMENTS. 

It is not implied in this condemnation that 
the thing in itself is an evil. The physical 
exercise of dancing is no more a sin than that 
of walking ; and accompanying an instrument 
of music with harmonious movements of the 
body in the dance is no more iniquitous than 
accompanying it with harmonious movements 
of the voice in song. If any one wishes to 
go into a large room, or upon the green, to 
dance for physical exercise by himself, or in 
company with those of his own sex, no one 
certainly could object. It is against such 
questionable additions, combinations, and ex- 
citements as are proved by experience to be 
dangerous that the Church Hfts its warning 
voice. 

Neither does the Church commit the error 
of condemning all dances as equally dangerous 
to good morals and religious life. In a public 
hall some dances may be less impure and ob- 
jectionable than others. Then, again, the 
dance in the home, under the eye of parents 
and friends, may be considered less dangerous 
than the public hall. And yet the Church 
feels it a duty to condemn the dance, without 
exception, as it does * * the use of intoxicating 



TESTIMONY OF THE CHURCH. loi 

drinks." An occasional glass of wine in the 
home is not so bad as drinking at a pubHc 
bar to intoxication; and yet because it has 
been found by experience that the one is 
likely to lead to the other both are forbidden. 
Dancing under the most careful restrictions 
has been known to fascinate and lead astray 
to lives of shame those who had been carefully 
reared. The drift and tendency is downward 
and not upward ; therefore, the signals of dan- 
ger are set up. If as many boats drifted 
toward Lake Erie as toward the falls on Niag- 
ara River, there would be little danger; but 
since all drift is toward the falls, the river is 
considered unsafe for careless boatmen. If it 
shall ever appear that the dance leads as many 
people toward a godly life as it now leads 
from it, the Church will no doubt withdraw 
its protest; but while the "drift" is all away 
from God toward the world and sin that pro- 
test must stand. 

Neither is it claimed that no one who 
dances is a Christian. I freely confess that 
many who seem to be sincere followers of 
Christ do dance, but I must believe that it is 



I02 AMUSEMENTS. 



with great loss of personal influence, that it 
endangers their own souls, is a reproach to 
the cause of Christ, and that if saved at all 
it will be '*so as by fire." 



f 



UNFAVORABLE TO HEALTH. 103 



Chapter XV. 

THE DANCE UNFAVORABLE TO HEALTH. 

THIS may seem to be a consideration of 
little value, and yet it is one of great im- 
portance, involving every interest of time and 
eternity. Our * * bodies are the temples of the 
Holy Ghost," and we have no right to dis- 
honor or weaken them. '*A sound mind in 
a sound body" is the natural formula for a 
happy, successful life. Our power for good 
in the world depends largely upon good health 
and physical capacity for the duties of life. 
The dance of amusement, as conducted by 
modern society, brings its hundreds annually 
to premature graves. For the fashionable 
dancing party a style of dress is adopted by 
the ladies especially that exposes them to 
great physical dangers; colds are contracted, 
the nervous system is shattered, and consump- 
tion, heart disease, or some other malady 
finishes what the dance commenced. The 



I04 AMUSEMENTS. 

long protracted, unusual exercise of dancing, 
in a heated atmosphere, through the hours 
usually given and demanded by nature for 
sleep; the feeble strength sustained for the 
unusual effort by unnatural excitement to be 
followed by a depression and reaction as un- 
natural; the late suppers and the excessive 
eating and drinking out of the order prescribed 
by nature and common usage; and the ex- 
posure of going into the chilling air in a 
heated, exhausted condition, with clothing de- 
signed for the dance and not for protection 
from the cold, has brought many to a sudden 
death, others to a slow decline, and still 
others to a feeble, disabled condition for hfe. 
Every community where the dance is prac- 
ticed can furnish abundant illustrations of the 
truth of these statements. Whatever destroys 
health and life, whether poison, gun-shot, or 
unnatural bodily exercises, is at war with 
God's law and with human welfare. 

It may be said, in reply, that these remarks 
apply only to the abuses of the dance; to 
which I have to say that this is precisely the 
point of complaint against the dance, that it 
has grown into a monstrous system of abuses 



UNFAVORABLE TO HEALTH. 105 

that have become essential to its maintenance, 
without which society would allow it to die 
unwept. 

I am not dealing with an ideal dance, but 
with the facts of the reality as it exists in 
society. There is no doubt that the dance 
might be so conducted as to be beneficial to 
health. If it Avere in the open air or well- 
ventilated apartments, at proper hours of the 
day, for a reasonable length of time, in suit- 
able attire for the free exercise of the lungs, 
heart, and other vital organs, and with no 
unnatural excitements, it might be a great 
conservator of good health. The dance of 
amusement, as now conducted, violates all 
these conditions, and by its work of death has 
merited condemnation. 



io6 AMUSEMENTS. 



Chapter XVI. 



THE DANCE UNFAVORABLE TO INTELLECTUAL AND 
SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT. 



THE practice of this fascinating amusement 
rarely fails to develop, in the young espe- 
cially, a passionate fondness for it, which sup- 
plants and roots out the love of solid study, 
good reading, intelligent conversation, and 
the higher and better forms of social inter- 
course. Such things are ''dull and stale" to 
the lover of the dance. When a party is in 
prospect, the mind is excited and occupied 
with it for days in advance, and when past, 
the excitement lingers and the mind lives over 
its scenes till another arises to call away the 
attention. Studies in school are neglected, 
solid reading is abandoned, the growth of in- 
telligence and the development of the nobler 
powers are stopped, and life becomes a suc- 
cession of frothy, unsubstantial sensations and 
excitements. There is neither time nor taste 



UNFAVORABLE TO DEVELOPMENT. 107 

left for the noblest and best work of life. In 
every sense, this "bodily exercise profiteth 
little:" it adds no new resources to the mind 
and develops no new powers in the body. 

It has been claimed for the dance that it 
promotes sociability. Does it ? It brings 
people together, cultivates freedom, familiar- 
ity, and ease, but does it develop the higher 
forms of sociability? Does it improve the 
powers of conversation ? Does it enlarge our 
view of human nature? Does it reveal the 
many-sidedness and the vast powers of the 
human mind, heart, and soul? Does it en- 
large our sympathies, and beget a more gener- 
ous, helpful spirit? Bring together a com- 
pany of people accustomed to spend their time 
in dancing, and attempt to engage them in in- 
telligent conversation, and the answers will ap- 
pear. An intelligent lady said to me in New 
York City, " But what can I do with my com- 
pany? The people of fashionable society do 
not read, they are not capable of sustaining an 
interesting conversation, and there is no way 
of entertaining tliem but by letting them 
dance." This difficulty no doubt exists, but 
to continue giving fuel to the flame only in- 



I08 AMUSEMENTS. 

creases the power of the conflagration. Peo- 
ple usually find their highest joy in the exer- 
cise of their strongest faculty, and if a novel- 
reading, theater-going, dancing, idle, godless 
company is brought together, they would 
doubtless be pleased with an invitation to use 
their heels rather than their heads. 



EXPENDITURE OF MONEY. I09 



Chapter XVII. 

THE DANCE REQUIRES A WASTEFUL EXPENDITURE 
OF MONEY. 

MONEY is a gift of God, a sacred trust 
committed to man for his good and for 
the glory of the giver, and it can not be 
abused with impunity. Its misuse in luxuri- 
ous living, in the indulgence of the animal 
appetites, and in maintaining shows, theatrical 
exhibitions, dances, and enervating diversions 
has been in all history one of the most pro- 
lific sources of the evils which undermine pri- 
vate virtue, corrupt public morals, and destroy 
individual and national life. The Roman em- 
pire, the most colossal and powerful national 
structure ever reared by human hands, was in 
this way "honey-combed," its substance eaten 
out, till there was not strength enough left to 
hold the vast fabric together, and it fell apart 
into many fragments from internal moral de- 
cay. The dance has a large place in history, 
in the work of individual, family, and national 



no AMUSEMENTS. 

degeneracy and bankruptcy. It is in close 
alliance with the goddess of fashion, and wor- 
ships at her shrine. It must have costumes, 
equipages, splendid apartments, and feastings 
on an elaborate and expensive scale, as a 
necessary condition to securing its consent to 
serve the pubhc. It is imperious, and demands 
unquestioning, instant obedience as the con- 
dition of averting the anger of its patron deity, 
the goddess of fashion. The grocer must hold 
his bill a little longer, the landlord must wait 
for his rent or look in vain for the bird that 
has flown, the tailor may collect his accounts 
as best he may, and the Church must look 
elsewhere for some one more able to give, 
while ^^ society'' wrings its demands from its 
helpless victims. 

Take the reports of one of our fashionable 
balls, as they may be found in the daily 
papers, and study this question of expense. 
There are described the elegant dresses, the 
material, color, buttons, laces, and length of 
train ; the flashing diamonds and jewels, splen- 
did apartments decorated with all the beauties 
of nature and art ; the magnificent tables laden 
with costly viands from land and sea — alto- 



EXPENDITURE OF MONEY. Ill 

gether presenting a scene that discredits 
straight-forward Hving upon and within a reg- 
ular income, paying for what is bought and 
keeping good faith with the plain shop-keep- 
ers and trades-people of the town. It stim- 
ulates the thirst for fashionable life, for display,' 
luxury, and fast living, which wrecks more 
families morally and financially than any other 
one thing. 

It may be said, ' ' Such dancing parties are 
few, and are given only by the rich." That 
is true, but the constant struggle of life is for 
the many to imitate the few, for the poor to 
live as the rich. Every dancing community, 
to the extent of its abiUty, strives toward this 
highest ideal, and the dance of the country 
village is as great a drain to its financial and 
moral resources as is the splendid ball to the 
metropolis, where diamonds flash and silks 
rustle in the kaleidoscope movements in the 
magnificent parlors. 

This matter of expense may seem to be a 
minor consideration to bring forward against 
an institution so popular and hoary as the 
dance, but when we turn the clear light of 
indisputable facts upon the ruins of bankrupt 



112 AMUSEMENTS. 

homes, dishonored reputations, the long' h'st 
of unsettled accounts held by hard-working, 
honest people, and the discredit cast upon 
common honesty in the every-day affairs of 
life, it assumes a magnitude and importance 
justifying any emphasis we can give it. 



EVIL ASSOCIATIONS. 1 13 



Chapter XVIII. 

THE DANCE CONDEMNED FOR ITS EVIL ASSOCI- 
ATIONS. 

IT was nursed in the lap of the wine-god, 
Bacchiis; has kept company with the the- 
ater since they were children together, two 
thousand years ago, and is a favorite in houses 
of shame; while it is never seen in Church, 
objects to sacred music, and leaves the house 
if prayer is proposed. You may almost always 
find it in the loitering places of the novel- 
reading, the wine and beer drinking, the pro- 
fane, and the licentious classes, but rarely 
may it be seen in the assemblies of earnest 
students, great thinkers, or devout Christians. 
If Ave judge it by the company it keeps, we 
shall hardly feel like introducing our sons and 
daughters to its acquaintance. It is not as- 
serted that no good people dance, but I may 
say that those who, by common consent, are 
considered the best people in society, do not 
dance, and for the reason that they think it 



114 AMUSEMENTS. 

unworthy of them. This is a matter of fact 
about which there is Httle room for difference 
of opinion. In the lowest and vilest grades 
of society the dance is most popular and most 
common; as you rise in the grade of intelli- 
gence and moral excellence its popularity and 
use decline, till you reach a point where it 
disappears altogether, and above which it is 
not found. These facts of moral affinity and 
association lie on the surface of things, may 
be observed by any one, and seem to justify 
the condemnation which I have pronounced 
upon the dance. 



RELATION OF SEXES. II5 



Chapter XIX. 

THE DANCE UNFAVORABLE TO THE RIGHT RELA- 
TION OF THE SEXES. 

A DIGNIFIED freedom and familiarity of 
social intercourse between men and women 
is unquestionably for the highest good of both. 
Whatever tends to lower the character of their 
association, to undignified familiarity, attitude, 
touch, or posture, however garnished and con- 
cealed by art, music, and public ceremonials 
must be regarded as nothing less than the 
"old serpent," reappearing in our earthly 
Eden to poison, blight, and destroy. The 
proper relation of the sexes in society is one 
of the greatest sources of earthly happiness, 
just as their improper relation is one of the 
most prolific sources of crime and misery. 
The dance of modern society is based upon, 
and finds its attraction in, the fact that the 
sexes unite in it, and are brought into such 
relations and positions as they would not as- 
sume but for the required formula — positions 



Ii6 AMUSEMENTS. 

that awaken and excite emotions aroused only 
by the opposite sex. 

I freely admit that there are many excep- 
tions to this general statement, that the reg- 
ularity of the movement accompanying the 
music, the elegant costumes, the delightful 
society, and the physical exhilaration hold 
many to the dance with a strange fascination ; 
but to the great majority, the excitement of 
unusual forms of contact with the opposite sex 
is the chief attraction. Many excellent people 
participate in the dance with no conception 
of the storms of wild and base passion which 
it excites in others, and often in those of 
whom they would least expect it. 

A live, sensitive nature must naturally be 
moved and stimulated by such associations 
as the dance secures ; only a dull, lethargic, 
or stupid soul would be unmoved by it. 
The circumstances are all powerfully sugges- 
tive. Men and women are brought into great 
freedom of personal contact ; the exercises are 
such as to beget a high flow and exhilaration 
of animal spirits ; it is night, and darkness 
shuts off the outer world ; the delicious intox- 
ication of harmony in music and motion fires 



RELATION OF SEXES. I17 

the blood ; the heaving breasts and beating 
hearts are brought into close contact; the 
warm breath upon the flushed cheek, and the 
electric currents flowing from hand to hand 
or flashing from eye to eye do the work 
nature intended for them under lawful con- 
ditions, and no one but the superhumanly 
good or the naturally deficient can pass un- 
moved through such scenes. It is this power 
of exciting the sexual feelings and emotions 
that gives the dance its great charm to so 
many. I beg your pardon, gentle reader, and 
I tremble myself to have written so plainly, 
but the truth has compelled my reluctant pen 
to the unpleasant task. That it is the truth 
appears in the fact that it is impossible to 
sustain the dance without this association of 
the sexes. 

You may say that all social gatherings are 
better enjoyed where the sexes mingle, but 
the dance, unlike other social gatherings, can 
not be maintained at all without this element; 
men would turn from it with loathing if women 
were not to participate. The life principle of 
a thing, that which is essential to it, and by 
which it exists, is the element which still 



Il8 AMUSEMENTS. 

maintains it when every other is removed, and 
without which it perishes though every other 
remain. Applying this principle, we will find 
the unusual, exciting contact of the sexes, the 
life principle of the dance, without which it 
would perish.'-^ 

More innocent young girls have fallen by 
the opportunities afforded for approaching 
them improperly in the dance than from any 
other one cause. The skillful rake considers 
his work half done when he has accustomed his 
intended victim to the touch and pressure of 
his hand; he may then advance by insensible 
degrees till his purposes are accomplished. 

*The Rev. Dr. W. C. Wilkinson bears this testimony: 
" With the sincerest reluctance, I bring myself to subjoin 
a remark bearing on this point, once overheard on car- 
board by a friend of mine, in a conversation that was pass- 
ing between two young men about their lady acquaintances. 
The horrible concreteness of the fellow's expression may 
give a wholesome recoil from their danger to some minds 
that would be little affected by a speculative statement of 
the same idea. Said one : ' I would not give a straw to 

dance with Miss . You can 't excite any more passion 

in her than you can in a stick of wood !' Pure young women 
of a warmer temperament, that innocently abandon them- 
selves to enthusiastic proclamations of their delight in the 
dance in the presence of gentlemen, should but barely once 
have a male intuition of the meaning of the involuntary 



RELATION OF SEXES. up 

It is one of the unsolved social enigmas, how 
our pure wives, mothers, and daughters can 
submit to such contact, attitudes, and move- 
ments as the dance requires, with men of 
whose characters they know nothing, and often 
with men of known bad character. It is no 
answer to say that only the vile think of evil. 
God so constituted human nature, with such 
batteries and telegraph lines of nerves, that 
the contact secured in the common dance is 
sure to send flashing along the lines to the 
office of passion and appetite just such mes- 
sages of doubtful character as I have been 
speaking of. It is a question of human na- 



glance that will often shoot across from eye to eye among 
their auditors. Or they should overhear the comments ex- 
changed among them afterwards. For when young men 
meet after an evening of the dance to talk it over together, 
it is not points of dress they discuss. Their only demand, 
and it is genei-ally conceded, is that ladies' dress shall not 
needlessly embarrass suggestion. Believe me, however 
women escape without the smell of fire upon their gar- 
ments, men often do not get out of the furnace, save with 
a flame devouring them, that they seek strange fountains, 
and willingly damn their souls, to quench." 

It tasks a resolutely firm nerve to speak thus of things 
that braze it out before the world and the Church, only 
for want of being thus spoken of. 



I20 AMUSEMENTS. 

ture, and I must hold that a fair share of 
knowledge on this important subject will lead 
any one to the approval of what I have here 
said. The rude ''kissing plays," and such like 
freedom between men and women often found 
in the rural districts, are condemned on the 
same principle. I take it as unlawful to do 
any thing to awaken passions or emotions 
that are themselves unlawful. 

It is freely conceded that these natural ex- 
citements may be restrained and governed, 
and are so restrained by great numbers ; but 
there are many in whom they become a con- 
suming fire, and these often are the most sen- 
sitive and gifted natures. No one has a right 
to subject himself and others to the strain of 
unnecessary temptation, nor because he is able 
to govern himself under temptation, to imperil 
others by his example who may not have the 
same ability to stand. 

Here is what a purely secular paper, the 
New York Journal of Education^ says about 
dancing: "A great deal can be said about 
dancing: for instance, the chief of police of 
New York City says that three-fourths of the 
abandoned girls in this city were ruined by 



RELATION OF SEXES. 121 

dancing. Young ladies allow gentlemen priv- 
ileges in dancing which, taken under any 
other circumstances, would be considered as 
improper. It requires neither brains nor good 
morals to be a good dancer. As the love 
of dancing increases the love of religion de- 
creases. How many of the best men and 
women are skillful dancers ? In ancient times 
the sexes danced separately. Alcohol is the 
spirit of beverages. So sex is the spirit of 
the dance. Take it away, and let the sexes 
dance separately, and dancing would go out 
of fashion very soon. Parlor dancing is dan- 
gerous. Tippling leads to drunkenness, and 
parlor dancing leads to ungodly balls. Tip- 
pling and parlor dancing sow to the wind, 
and both reap the whirlwind. Put dancing 
in the crucible, apply the acids, weigh it, and 
the verdict of reason, morality, and religion 
is, * Weighed in the balance and found 
wanting.' " 



122 AMUSEMENTS. 



Chapter XX. 

THE DANCE DESTRUCTIVE TO CHRISTIAN LIFE. 

IF you wish to know whether a drug Is inju- 
rious or not, you ask a physician who has 
observed its effects and studied its history. 
His observation of facts will be worth more 
than the speculations of a thousand theorists 
Avho have given no attention to the facts of 
practical experiment and demonstration. The 
careful students and observers of moral and 
social influences declare that the dance has a 
bad record for its destructive influence upon 
religious life ; in short, that it is a deadly poison 
to it. In its least objectionable form, in our 
Christian homes, under proper safeguards, it 
has been found that it quickly roots out an 
earnest rehgious spirit, and that where it pre- 
vails to any considerable extent among Chris- 
tian people, a bUght falls upon the religious 
life of the Church. This fact is arrived at by 
the scientific method of observing phenomena 



DESTROYS CHRISTIAN LIFE. 123 

by taking the results of practical experiments, 
of which, alas, the Church has had too many, 
and as a scientific argument is unanswerable. 
Fifty men standing up and declaring that a 
drug so innocent in appearance as belladonna 
can not be injurious to the human system, 
even if taken in large quantities, has no force 
at all against the observed facts, that wherever 
so taken it acts as a quick poison. Men may 
say, "The dance is an innocent-looking affair,'* 
and I grant it is. But observation shows that 
it acts as a deadly poison to spiritual life, and 
therefore the voice of warning is lifted against 
it. To point out just why and how it is so to 
the curious inquirer might be as difficult as 
for the physician to tell just how malaria does 
its work ; our chief concern is about the facts, 
and by them we must govern our conduct. 

The spirit of the dance is not the spirit of 
true religion ; if the one be harbored the other 
will depart. Many excellent people who are 
examples of the common virtues may be 
found in the dance, but the earnest, prayerful 
Christian soon finds that he must choose 
between the dance and his religious life; — he 
can not maintain both. 



124 AMUSEMENTS. 

But let US hear the testimony of those 
Avhose business it is to observe and study 
religious life and the evils in society that war 
against it, and I submit that the testimony of 
such men, like that of the physician as to the 
effects of a drug, must be accepted as con- 
clusive, especially if their number and stand- 
ing are such as to preclude the possibility of 
mistake. The first testimony is from the 
* ' Pastoral Letter of the Archbishops and Bish- 
ops of the Roman Catholic Church in the 
United States." It says: "In this conviction 
we consider it to be our duty to warn our 
people against those amusements which may 
easily become to them an occasion of sin, 
and especially against the fashionable dances, 
which, as at present carried on, are revolting 
to every feeling of delicacy and propriety, 
and are fraught with the greatest danger to 
morals." The next testimony is by Bishop 
Hopkins, of Vermont, at the time of his death 
the senior bishop of the Episcopal Church. 
He says: **In the period of youthful educa- 
tion I have shown that dancing is chargeable 
with waste of time, the interruption to useful 
study, the indulgence of personal vanity and 



DESTROYS CHRISTIAN LIFE. 125 

display, and the premature incitement of the 
passions. At the age of maturity it adds to 
these no small danger to health, by late hours, 
flimsy dresses, heated rooms, and exposed 
persons; while its incongruity with strict 
Christian sobriety and principle, and its tend- 
ency to the love of dissipation are so manifest 
that no ingemdty can make it consistent with the 
covenant of baptism. It would give me sin- 
cere pleasure to have expressed a very differ- 
ent opinion, because I am well aware that 
few of my readers will relish my unaccommo- 
dating sentiments on such a theme. But 
candor and honesty forbid, and I may not 
sacrifice what I believe to be the truth in the 
service of worldly expediency." 

Bishop Mcllvaine, of Ohio, thus writes: 
"Let me now turn to two subjects in which 
there is no difficulty of discrimination — the 
theater and the dance. The only line I would 
draw in regard to these Is, that of entire exclu- 
sion. And yet, my brethren, I am well aware 
how easy it is for the imagination to array 
both these in such an abstract and elementary 
simplicity, so divested of all that gives them 
their universal character and relish, that no 



126 AMUSEMENTS. 

harm could be detected in either. . . . The 
question is not what we can imagine them to 
be, but what they always have been, and will 
be, and must be, in such a world as this, to 
render them pleasurable to those who patron- 
ize them. Strip them bare, till they stand in 
the simple innocence to which their defenders' 
arguments would reduce them and the world 
would not have them. 

'*If the writer be asked whether, in his 
view, in the pomps and vanities of this wicked 
world, which are renounced in baptism, are 
included theatrical amusements and dances, he 
answers, without hesitation, in the affirmative. 
If he be asked whether, under the apostle's 
exhortation, * Be not conformed to this world, * 
they are included as matters of worldly con- 
formity to be forsaken, he answers, * Certainly.* 
If he be asked whether these things are con- 
sistent with the cultivation of a spiritual mind 
and the maintaining of a rightful Christian 
influence, by example, for the good of men 
and the glory of God, he must answer, they 
are, in his view, very inconsistent with such 
duties. He thinks they are renounced in bap- 
tism, that their renunciation is ratified in con- 



DESTROYS CHRISTIAN LIFE. 127 

firmation, and professed in every participation 
of the Lord's-supper. He prays that the time 
may come when all communicants will unite 
in rejecting these things." 

Rev. Stuart Robinson, D.D., late pastor of 
the Second Presbyterian Church of Louisville, 
Kentucky, whose vigorous intellect and fear- 
less advocacy of what he believed to be 
truth made him well known throughout the 
land, said, in a recent article in the ''Free 
Christian Commonwealth'.''' **To intelligent 
Christian men and women, with the Word of 
God in their hands and in their hearts, as the 
infaUible rule of faith, it is simply impossible 
that this question of indulgence in such 
worldly pleasures as the theater, the masquer- 
ade, the card-table, and the dance, can be a 
doubtful or debatable question. . . . And 
the ground on which the Christian pastor 
warns and rebukes is chiefly neither because 
of any inherent sin in the amusements them- 
selves, nor even the ethical precepts of the 
Gospel against worldly conformity, but as 
evidences of a decay of spiritual life and dan- 
ger of making shipwreck of faith. Whether 
able metaphysically to prove the sin or not, 
9 



128 AMUSEMENTS. 

or to demonstrate the points of casuistry aris- 
ing under the application of the Gospel rule, 
or to confirm by testimony of the Church or 
not, the signs of spiritual decay are manifest, 
and therefore he warns and enforces the Gos- 
pel precepts upon the declining believer." 

Similar testimonies might be given almost 
without number from the leading pastors and 
thinkers of the Methodist, Baptist, and other 
evangelical Churches were they needed, but 
these are sufficient to show the opinion of the 
most capable and reliable observers of the 
effects of this amusement upon religious life. 
The opinion of ten thousand worldly men, 
Avho understand neither the spirit nor the laws 
of religious life, would weigh nothing against 
the testimony of one such witness as those I 
have presented. There can be no reason why 
these eminent scholars and thinkers should 
pronounce against the dance, except that they 
have observed its baleful influences upon relig- 
ious life. Upon this question of fact the test- 
imony of these competent witnesses must be 
accepted as conclusive. 

Any one who prayerfully considers the 
claims of Christ upon his professed followers, 



DESTROYS CHRISTIAN LIFE. 129 

and the teachings of the Word of God in 
regard to the spirit and practices of this world, 
can not fail to see that the dance is incon- 
sistent with true religion. Consider such 
passages as these, ' * What ! know ye not that 
your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost 
which is in you, which ye have of God, and 
ye are not your own? For ye are bought 
with a price; therefore glorify God in your 
body, and in your spirit, which are God's." 
"Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or what- 
soever ye do, do all to the glory of God." 
"For the love of Christ constraineth us; 
because we thus judge, that if one died for 
all, then were all dead; and that he died for 
all, that they which live should not hence- 
forth live unto themselves, but unto him 
which died for them, and rose again." "Know 
ye not that the friendship of the world is 
enmity with God ? Whosoever, therefore, will 
be a friend of the world is the enemy of God." 
"Love not the world, neither the things that 
are in the world. If any man love the world, 
the love of the Fathef is not in him." 
"Wherefore come out from among them, and 
be ye separate, salch the Lord, and touch not 



130 AMUSEMENTS. 

the unclean thing; and I will receive you.** 
In the presence of these words of truth, Avith 
the full light of the *'Sun of righteousness" 
turned upon it, the dance reveals its satanic 
features, and the truly consecrated soul must 
withdraw from it with horror. 



GAMES. 131 



Chapter XXI. 

CARDS, BILLIARDS, AND GAMES. 

THE love and practice of gaming seem, by 
the records of history, to have been almost 
universal in human society. Games call into 
pleasing exercise many natural faculties and 
emotions; the love of them is therefore nat- 
ural and in itself innocent. There is the 
pleasing excitement of a contest for the mas- 
tery; the stimulus of a rivalry for the honor 
of highest skill ; the love of applause, always 
sweet to the victor, and oftentimes the hope 
of a prize or reward; and mingling with all 
these a degree of social pleasure arising from 
the contact of mind with minds, giving to 
games a marvelous power to fascinate and 
charm the mind. They often partake of 
the nature of amusement and recreation, and 
are then specially interesting in their contrast 
with hard work, and their sanitary value 
quiets the conscience on the question of 
wasting time. 



132 AMUSEMENTS. 

The tendency in all systems of gaming is 
toward a contest for the mastery, with a prize 
as a reward of superior skill. The human 
mind instinctively craves an object in every 
pursuit, a result for every effort, and a reward 
for acquired skill. The excitement of the race 
may sustain interest in it, but a prize at the 
goal lends to it an additional charm ; it nerves 
the racer to greater effort, and fires the spec- 
tator with more enthusiasm. It may be sim- 
ply the championship and the applause that 
attends it ; to some minds that is the richest 
of all prizes. It may be a badge of honor, a 
political or social distinction, or a sum of 
money — whatever it is, the game is more in- 
teresting when played for a stake, and there- 
fore the tendency in gaming is toward the 
setting up of a real or fictitious prize for the 
winner. 

The early Greek games were so conducted 
as to avoid most of the evils of common 
gambling, while the victor was properly rec- 
ognized and rewarded. They were undoubt- 
edly powerful agencies in developing that 
physical vigor, national spirit, and intellectual 
power, which have given the Greeks a place 



GAMES. 133 

of such honor in history. None were per- 
mitted to engage in the games in whose person 
or character there was any defect or stain, and 
all were required to take an oath, with their 
hands on the sacred bleeding victim, that they 
would *'use no fraud or guile" in the sacred 
contest. There was a high religious charac- 
ter, and a noble spirit of manly honor in these 
games. This exalted religious character in 
the games of Greece soon degenerated ; was 
lost altogether in those of Rome, and has 
never appeared in the games of modern times. 
The games of the present make no higher 
claim than that of being entertaining, amus- 
ing, healthful, and, in skillful hands, profitable 
for money-making. The games that unite all 
these elements of interest are the most pop- 
ular and fascinating. 

The observed evil effects of gaming for a 
prize have been so great, that a strong op- 
position to it has always existed in the 
most conscientious minds. It becomes un- 
duly exciting, and thus involves the greatest 
perils. Under a high state of excitement men 
will yield to temptations, give way to passions, 
resort to means to secure their object, and 



134 AMUSEMENTS. 

commit acts of fraud or violence to which they 
would be in no danger in their natural moods. 
The man who gambles is led on step by step 
to stake more and more, in the hope of win- 
ning in one effort what he has lost in many ; 
money, business, reputation, home, and all 
he has or loves is now involved, his face is 
flushed, his manner is nervous, his temples 
throb, his heart beats quickly, he must win or 
all is lost. It does not require a philosopher 
to see that this situation is one of the great- 
est peril, and that the first step in gambling 
implies this at no distant period. 

It entices the affections, absorbs the time, 
disorders business, and disqualifies for the 
regular duties of life. Regular, virtuous, hon- 
est living seems intolerably slow and monot- 
onous to the man whose blood has been fired 
with the gambler's excitement ; regular duties 
and orderly movements cease, and the life 
falls into chaos, swept by tempest without and 
rent by convulsions of internal fire. 

It puts in peril and hangs upon the caprice 
of chance the inheritance of our ancestors, 
and the just rewards of our own toil, thus ob- 
liberating a sense of the sacredness of values 



GAMES. 135 

and of the rights of property. A man who 
can wager the sweat and blood of his father 
and mother, the fruit of his own honest indus- 
try, and the inheritance of his children, to go 
without compensation to some villain upon the 
throwing of a dice or the turning of a card, is 
recreant, not only to all moral obligations, but 
to common human instincts as well. The ter- 
rible consuming fire of this passion for gam- 
bling, if it once be allowed to kindle upon 
the affections and the will, leaves not a single 
green or beautiful thing in the life, but burns 
on till nothing is left but blackened walls to 
proclaim the ruin it has wrought. 

Contravening the laws of good morals and 
right living, gambling must find its support 
among those who disregard moral obligations, 
and thus its associations become corrupt and 
corrupting. The gaming house is on intimate 
terms with the drinking saloon and the brothel, 
and is filled with an atmosphere of obscenity 
and profanity. To enter such society is to 
invite contagion, grasps hands with the temp- 
ter, and welcome destruction. 

The successful player is naturally tempted 
to use his easily gotten gain in fast living and 



136 AMUSEMENTS. 

sensual indulgences ; while the unsuccessful 
player, under the powerful reaction that 
follows high excitement and disappointed 
hopes, is strongly tempted to drown his morti- 
fication and chagrin in the same excesses, or 
in a wild rush out of life by his own hand. 
Either success or failure is dangerous, as afford- 
ing strong temptation to drinking, licentious- 
ness, forgery, or suicide. 

I have given this partial outline of the evils 
of gambling to give emphasis to what I have 
to say about gaming in general. These evils 
have had the effect upon society of dividing 
games of all kinds into two general classes, 
those used in gambling and those not so used; 
and further, of awakening a very strong op- 
position among man}^ wise and good people 
against the use of games employed by gam- 
blers, as an amusement suitable for the social 
gathering or the home. Some go to the ab- 
surd extreme of forbidding all games, and 
others to the dangerous extreme of allowing 
all, if the element of gambling is excluded. 
The truth will, as in most cases, be found 
somewhere between the extreme opinions. 

That children and young people especially 



GAMES. 137 

should spend their unoccupied hours in games 
and plays, seems to be the clear design of 
Providence and the dictate of reason. It 
seems equally clear that playing with gam- 
blers' games incurs a needless danger. Play- 
ing at cards or billiards is at least handling 
the tools and acquiring a knowledge of the 
gambler's art; it is the preparatory education 
that makes possible the gambler's career. In 
itself it must be harmless and innocent enough, 
but if it begets a fondness for and skill in 
playing these games which, under temptation, 
render the soul weak, then it is a great evil. 
If one plays at all, he will naturally seek to 
excel ; this will develop skill, and where skill 
exists there will be a natural temptation to 
match it against the skill of another, and if 
possible to turn it to a good account in a 
pressing financial emergency. It is very easy 
to say that one ought to be strong enough to 
resist these temptations, and the majority will 
be ; but the few who year after year fall by it 
justify the demand that such games shall not 
be used as a social amusement. The prospect 
of sudden riches acquired as by a wave of the 
magician's wand ; the necessity of money in 



138 AMUSEMENTS. 

order to recognition by fashionable society; 
and the respect paid to the successful specu- 
lator or schemer, who seems to conjure up 
fabulous fortunes from the depths of his own 
fertile brain ; and the belief that the use of a 
laboriously acquired skill one evening in the 
week, will soon secure results to be obtained 
only by many years of hard toil in regular 
business, presents a temptation before which 
thousands fall annually to rise no more. If 
there is but little skill or love for regular busi- 
ness, if wine-drinking adds its excitement and 
indifference to moral qualities ; and if the 
gaming may be carried on at hours and in 
places that do not interfere with the business 
of the day, in perfect secrecy, and with com- 
panions of respectable position in society, the 
temptation is specially dangerous. Society 
is full of illustrations of the truth of the posi- 
tion here assumed, that these games are dan- 
gerous. In a previous chapter I have given 
two striking examples in the use of billiards 
under the most careful supervision, in connec- 
tion with Christian institutions, with the most 
painful results.* The number might here be 

* See page 24. 



GAMES. 139 

indefinitely increased were they not already 
written in characters of flame on the very 
surface of things before the eyes of all men. 

There is also the objection to these gam- 
bling games that they become too exciting 
and seriously interfere with important duties, 
even when there is no prize at stake. In 
many communities social gaming-clubs are 
formed, the evenings and spare hours are 
spent at cards, the home-life is neglected, 
reading is abandoned, refining, social inter- 
course is surrendered, every thing is swallowed 
up by the all-consuming mania for gaming. 
There is no intellectual or social improvement, 
and no possible gain to justify setting aside 
agreeable and profitable exercises for these 
games. While the father is with his club 
playing "whist" or "backgammon," his boys 
are upon the street playing something worse. 
It is his duty and should be his pleasure to 
make his own home joyous and attractive 
with such games, readings, or other exercises 
as would interest the children and bind them 
to the home-life. He would thus find the 
purest and best recreation for himself, and 
would solve the problem that so disturbs the 



I40 AMUSEMENTS. 

minds of many parents to-day, how to hold 
their influence over their children. 

The observed effects upon religious life of 
this devotion to games justifies the assertion 
that spiritual life declines under its influence. 
Bible-reading, private devotion, social worship 
and effort for the salvation of souls do not 
grow rapidly where cards and billiards are in 
high favor and frequent use. The excitement 
even of less fascinating games than those used 
for gambling, often interferes with the most 
solemn and important duties, and that with 
persons in whom it would be least expected 
I have known ministers so excited over the 
innocent game of croquet as to neglect the 
duties of their sacred office for it, spending 
the whole day, from morning to night, in a 
recreation that became dissipation. One of 
the most careful pastors I ever knew was 
approached in the midst of a game with an 
earnest request to baptize a sick child. He 
promised to comply as soon as the game was 
finished. He became excited as the game 
went on and continued playing till the sun 
went down. Then remembering the sick child 
he hastened away to administer to it the 



GAMES. 141 

sacred ordinance of baptism, but to his horror 
he found that the child had died while he 
was at his games. I speak of this not to cast 
reflection upon this game, nor upon ministers 
who engage in what seems a very proper 
recreation for them, but to show that under 
the circumstances where it would be least 
likely to occur games have power to excite 
and absorb attention from the most important 
duties. 

A passion for gaming has always been 
regarded as inconsistent with a sincere, ear- 
nest life. How is it possible for a Christian, 
who is awake and alive to the great truths 
and the sublime mission of the Gospel, who 
feels the worth of his own soul and of the 
souls around him, to give himself up to this 
fascination? An earnest business man even 
must find little time or disposition for these 
exciting games. 

Upon the introduction of cards into West- 
ern Europe, on the continent and in England, 
severe laws were enacted against them, in 
some cases, because of their bad moral influ- 
ence, in other cases, and especially in England, 
because the excitement and love of gaming 



142 AMUSEMENTS. 

they produced interfered with business and 
with the duties the citizen owed to the State. 
The law in England against cards and other 
games held the following language: *' Crafty 
persons have invented many and sundry new 
and crafty games and plays, by reason whereof 
archery is sore decayed, and daily is like to 
be more and more minished, and divers bow- 
yers and fletchers for lack of work gone and 
inhabited themselves in Scotland and other 
places out of this realm, there working and 
teaching their science, to the persuance of the 
same, to the great comfort of strangers and 
detriment of this realm." It is further pro- 
vided that a severe fine shall be assessed upon 
any one playing **at cards" and other pro- 
hibited games. Experience has proved that 
these games are of a nature to demand more 
time and thought, by the excitement they 
generate, than can be safely spared from the 
common duties of life; and, further, that where 
they are maintained vital godliness declines 
and common virtue itself is put in peril. 

The plea that they are useful for amuse- 
ment and recreation has but little force, since 
there are innumerable other games and recre- 



GAMES. 143 

ations free from the dangers that attend these. 
If this were not the case then it would be in 
order to inquire whether the value of the 
amusement is sufficient to justify incurring the 
risk ; but since there are other amusements 
free from these dangers, the question is not 
worthy of consideration. It is the part of 
wisdom to keep as far from danger as possible. 
A gentleman advertised for a coachman ; four 
men applied for the position. The road from 
the house led by the brink of a dangerous 
precipice. The gentleman took one of the 
applicants to the precipice and asked how 
near he could drive to it without going over. 
He said within six inches. He tried another; 
he said within four inches; the third said he 
could drive with the outside of the tire even 
with the precipice. The fourth was called, a 
whole-souled Irishman, full of common sense, 
and he said, "Sure, sir, and I would keep as 
far from it as ever I could." The gentleman 
clapped him on the shoulder at once and said : 
*'You are my man." Only the fool-hardy 
adventurer will see how near he can go to the 
brink of moral ruin without going over. The 
wise man will keep as far away as possible. 



144 AMUSEMENTS. 



Chapter XXII. 

A CLOSING WORD WITH PROFESSING CHRISTIANS. 

IN this treatise I have defended amusements, 
exalted the home, convicted the theater, 
unmasked the dance, and pointed out the 
dangers of gaming. I come now to ask the 
children of our common Lord prayerfully to 
consider their duty with regard to these 
things. 

You have possibly felt at liberty to indulge 
in them because they are not specifically for- 
bidden in the Word of God. The objector 
often triumphantly asks for the passage of 
Scripture in Avhich these condemned amuse- 
ments are prohibited. It must be clear, how- 
ever, to the most superficial reader that the 
Bible does not pretend to be a "guide-book,'* 
giving all the details of practical life, but that 
it simply announces with great variety of his- 
torical illustrations, certain great principles 
covering all possible demands, leaving to our 
consciences and judgments the work of mak- 



A CLOSING WORD. 145 

ing the application to the various practical 
questions that arise in Hfe. It must be clear 
to you, dear reader, that the spirit of the 
amusements condemned in the preceding 
pages is that worldly spirit against which the 
New Testament so constantly warns us; that 
their associations are such as the Word of 
God condemns; that the influences which 
gather about and go out from them are such 
as the Bible and good men of every age pro- 
nounce dangerous; and that their practical 
results have always been such as to make 
demons rejoice and good men mourn. The 
whole spirit and tenor of the Bible, re- enforced 
by the testimony of the best people of all 
ages, condemn these amusements. It is, 
therefore, impossible to engage in them and 
still walk in the full favor of God and in the 
light of his Word. If you would be a *' Bible 
Christian," walking in "fellowship with God 
and in the comforts of the Holy Ghost," you 
will be compelled to "come out from among 
them, be separate, and touch not the unclean 
thing." 

You have possibly quieted your conscience 
by saying, "It is but a little thing." It is 



146 AMUSEMENTS. 

**the little foxes that spoil the grapes" in the 
Lord's vineyard. Sin always begins by httles, 
asks only for room to plant a little seed, and 
trusts the rest to time, favoring circumstances, 
and the strong impulses of human nature. 
The smaller the sin the more dangerous it is, 
if only it has in it the living germ of evil to 
grow and bring forth a harvest after its kind 
in the character. You are in no danger from 
a great sin ; you would reject it at once ; but 
if a little one can in some way be introduced 
into your life to grow there Satan's designs 
are accomplished. Pestilence does its deadly 
work by the very little particles it sends out 
into the air unseen and unheard, so delicate 
are they that the system feels no shock or 
wound when they attack it, but being taken 
up into the warm life-blood they grow and 
assert themselves till at last the lifeless form, 
cold and pale, proclaims the pOAver of these 
*'httle things," the presence of which was not 
even recognized in the beginning. Every act 
and word is a seed-planting that will grow in 
the character, the harvest of which must be 
gathered, and here appears the solemnity and 
importance of every act of life. These ''little 



A CLOSING WORD. 147 

sins" weaken the character, deaden conscience, 
and relax moral discipline, so that in the 
day of fierce trial there is not strength to 
stand. 

It must be true, also, that sin is sin whether 
small or great, entailing upon its author the 
wrath of God. He who commits a ''little 
sin," if any such distinction in sins as little 
and great may exist, shows his disposition of 
disobedience as fully as though it were a great 
sin. The least stain of sin upon the soul 
destroys that ' ' holiness without which no 
man shall see the Lord." When Can ova was 
about to begin his great statue of Napoleon, 
his keen eye detected a tiny red line running 
through the upper portion of the splendid 
block, that, at great cost had been brought 
from Paros, and he rejected it as worthless. 
When God comes to fill the palace of his 
glory with souls that shall shine on to the 
praise of his grace, when the works of Canova 
have crumbled to dust, do you suppose he 
will be less jealous of his glory or less exact- 
ing than the great artist? A little sin in the 
character will be as fatal as the red line in 
the marble. 



148 AMUSEMENTS. 

■**< Little by little,' the tempter said, 
As a dark and cunning snare he spread, 

For the young, unwary feet. 
* Little by little, and day by day,' 
I will tempt the careless soul astray 
Into the broad and flowery way. 

Until the ruin is made complete. 

'Little by little,' sure and slow, 

We fashion our future of bliss or woe, 

As the present passes away. 
Our feet are climbing the stairway bright, 
Up to the regions of endless light, 
Or gliding downward into the night, 

•Little by little and day by day.'" 

Many Christians think it safe to go "just 
once." The argument that is good for going 
once will generally be good for a second time, 
and will be re-enforced by a stimulated appe- 
tite, while the conscience will have grown 
weaker by being denied its claims. In soci- 
ety, as in morals and religion, the only safety 
is in not touching the forbidden thing; one 
violation of law is fatal. If a man commits 
murder or theft but once, he must suffer the 
penalty, and we may not expect God to be 
less exact in his government than we are in 
society. One sin is fatal. The night the 
Brooklyn theater burned, a number of Chris- 
tians went, "for once only," their first night, 



A CLOSING WORD. 149 

and their bodies were found in the ruins ; a 
true type of what may occur to the souls of 
others who may be so fortunate as to escape 
with their bodies. Your example also, though 
as you suppose among entire strangers, may 
prove fatal to some soul. *' A man who bore 
the reputation of a Christian at home, being 
in the city, went to the theater for once, think- 
ing the act would never be known. Some 
years after, he was sent for to visit a dying 
man. This man charged him with the ruin 
of his soul. While young, he had seen this 
professed Christian enter the theater, and fol- 
lowed his example ; saying to himself, that, if 
a Church member and Sunday-school super- 
intendent could do this, he could. He be- 
came hardened in sin, and now lay hopeless in 
death, but felt that the crisis of his life was 
that fatal example." Total abstinence is the 
path of safety here as with strong drinks ; — he 
who never takes the first glass will not fall. 

You may not have sufficiently considered 
the great unwritten law of ** Christian expe- 
diency." Many things, as St. Paul says, are 
** lawful" that are not ** expedient. " This is 
not a Gospel rule only, it is a law of nature 



I50 AMUSEMENTS. 

and of society as well. A man ma}% without 
violating any law, make a clown of himself, 
but there are few who consider it expedient 
to do so ; to every one of any spirit or dignity 
it would seem like throwing life away, and 
yet it is "lawful." There is a large class of 
things not unlawful, that prove destructive of 
all the higher and better forms of life. A man 
at table may find many dishes not tainted 
in the least with poison, of which it will not 
be expedient for him to eat. In Christian life 
we must of necessity conform to this great law 
of expediency in dealing with such questions 
as the theater, the opera, the dance, and gam- 
ing. Eighteen hundred years of Christian his- 
tory have worked over and over again many 
of these perplexing' problems with but one 
result. By experience and observation in 
many fields, under varying circumstances, and 
at different times. Christians have arrived at a 
pretty definite knowledge of what hinders or 
helps spiritual life. Only blind stupidity or 
gross indifference to the whole subject of prac- 
tical godliness can lead any one to reject this 
treasure of sacred learning gathered from the 
harvest fields of tlie Christian centuries. Only 



A CLOSING WORD. ^ 151 

a fool will insist upon demonstrating in his 
own system, the qualities and effects of all 
poisons and drugs. Wise men govern them- 
selves largely by the experience and observa- 
tion of others, where they do not contradict 
reason or the plain teachings of the Word of 
God. 

It is your business in life, not only to do 
no harm by word, deed, or general example, 
but to do and to get all the good you can ; to 
be an example, an instructor of the souls of 
men, and a guide to the young. You are 
commissioned to live among men as Christ 
lived ; faithfully to witness for him, to illus- 
trate, emphasize, and make honorable his Gos- 
pel among men, and in order to this you will 
have great need prayerfully to consider this 
law of Christian expediency. 

Allow me to remind you of the importance 
of maintaining healthy amusements and recre- 
ations in your own home and social circles. 
Christians are sadly failing at this point. All 
our cities swarm with young men from the 
country, who come as strangers into the midst 
of these seething masses of humanity to seek 
their fortunes. They have left their venerable 



152 AMUSEMENTS. 

parents, the altar of prayer, and the sweet 
influences of home behind. The saloon, the 
theater, and all vile places are open to them, 
extend a cordial welcome, offer relief from 
their loneliness, and an open door to society 
Avith all that it affords. Christians pass them 
by, or look on them coldly and doubtfully, do 
nothing to entertain and help them, and won- 
der that the young people are so indifferent to 
religion and the Church. Throw open your 
doors, turn on all the gas, bring out your best 
music, invite in the young and the old, not 
forgetting the strange young man, make life 
joyous and bright, and much as your guests 
will be blessed a tenfold greater blessing will 
come to you and your house. Study the 
young life about you, keep yourself in sympa- 
thy with it, draw it to you by ministering to 
it, show it lovingly the better way, and you 
will not have much trouble in protecting it 
from these corrupting amusements of which 
I have been speaking. 

We are now to part, dear reader, you to 
your way, I to mine, but before you go, one 
word. What you and the whole Church of 
Christ need as a sure and sufficient protection 



A CLOSING WORD. 153 

against these evils is to ''be filled vjitk the 
Spirit.'' Then other joys and aspirations will 
satisfy the heart, a ** peace that passeth under- 
standing" will remove disquietude, ** perfect 
love " will afford a perpetual feast, light 
"above the brightness of the sun will make 
beautiful the pathway of life, the "graces of 
the Spirit," like jewels, will adorn your person, 
the company of the saints will be sweeter than 
the society of the world, your trials will be 
transformed into blessings, and the work of 
gathering stars for your crown will be the 
most delightful employment for your willing 
hands. 



